Restaurants can use an exciting assortment of mobile platforms to find, hire and train staff members. The days when managers had to wait a day or two for their ads to appear in the local paper are gone, and restaurateurs can post an ad online and hire someone within a few hours in emergency situations.
Of course, the trends for digital communications and mobile hiring bring both pros and cons when it comes to hiring the right people. Managers face problems hiring the newest generation of workers — millennials — because they want to communicate by device as much as possible. Hiring managers can’t expect to enjoy the positive benefits of online hiring unless they’re willing to change their hiring and retention strategies.
The Hiring Marketplace
Not many managers will hire a job candidate without meeting the person, but today’s job applicant is less willing to apply for jobs in-person unless they have a pretty strong chance of success. Job seekers check their phones several times a day to find the latest job opportunities in their areas, and restaurants can fill positions faster by advertising jobs online. Web-based apps include platforms where applicants can complete their applications online, inquire about work through text messages and streamline communications between employers and job seekers.
Promoting Your Restaurant’s Culture
Job applicants want to know more about where they’re going to work, and restaurants that are hiring the youngest generation of workers make accommodations for the digital-savvy generation. Making it easy for job candidates to apply online for preliminary consideration benefits both parties by offering the following time-saving advantages:
- Finding out if a candidate is more interested in the job, pay or company
- Screening candidates for qualifications, core competencies, references and personal attitudes
- Learning about a restaurant’s cuisine, social causes and food sourcing
- Applying for preliminary consideration
- Screening job candidates for criminal records and credit ratings if relevant
- Answering initial questions to determine whether the restaurant or applicant should pursue the application process further
The Hiring Marketplace
Restaurants face high turnover rates, expensive training costs and new work attitudes among the younger job applicants who typically fill entry-level restaurant jobs. The high costs of continually filling positions make it worthwhile to spend more time screening and attracting better candidates for those positions. Mobile tools offer restaurants the resources they need for reaching the labor market regardless of the city, state or restaurant concept.
Mobile surveys find that up to 85 percent of people access the Internet at least once per day. Google reports that mobile job recruitment grew by a factor of 16.3 in just one year. Your pool of workers uses mobile phones with larger screens, job-seeking apps, SMS alerts for job openings and comprehensive Internet access when looking for a new job. Restaurants can’t afford to ignore these mobile advances if they want to find, hire and keep the best workers.
Social Media’s Effect on Hiring
Many people look for jobs through their favorite social sites, and restaurants can engage potential job candidates through LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. The benefits of using the social media for restaurants include creating fans from regular customers and people who support the restaurant’s concept, targeting job seekers more selectively and being able to get a more in-depth look at potential hires from their social posts.
Hiring Problems for Restaurants
It doesn’t matter where you live — Texas, New York, Colorado or Florida. Restaurants are rapidly expanding and finding fewer people who want to work for minimum wages. Restaurant employment grew 15.9 percent between February of 2010 and October of 2014. If you want to hire workers for your restaurant, you face severe competition. Savvy HR staff members play a longer game by assessing their current gaps and estimating future growth to determine their hiring needs.
Using mobile technology, your restaurant can become the first employer that qualified job candidates check when looking for work. Candidates might check up to 15 resources before beginning a preliminary application.
Making Your Restaurant’s Hiring Process Mobile-Friendly
You can make your hiring process mobile-friendly by advertising on Internet-based advertising platforms, using digital resources for taking applications, connecting with social media to advertise careers and using popular apps to hire and train workers. Your strategies for mobile hiring might include:
- Streamlining communications through responsive portals for taking job applications
- Engaging potential workers through guerrilla marketing, college recruiting and community-based events
- Accepting electronic resumes, applications and cover letters
- Making your digital pages’ designs responsive to all types of devices
- Providing candidates answers to questions, photos of job duties, videos, online training manuals and other supporting resources
- Using social media to recruit
- Interacting with job applicants more completely by phone or computing device
Almost one-fourth of all Google searches include the word “job” in the keyword phrase, so the value of mobile hiring strategies is clear. People look for jobs online, research potential employers and begin the application process through mobile technology. Restaurants and recruiters have been slower to adapt to these changes than the public. Restaurants face extreme hiring challenges and training costs, so using mobile hiring technologies to attract, screen and hire workers makes good sense strategically and financially.