6 Ways To Attract More Candidates For Your Chef Roles This Year
Recruiting for your Chef roles isn’t easy. Particularly in today’s market. In the last few years, the number of chef jobs has increased. Trying to recruit skilled chefs has become like gold dust.
According to research presented by Korn Ferry, by 2030, around 85 million roles could go unfilled, simply because there aren’t enough skilled people out there to take them. At the same time, employees are becoming a lot more discerning about where they choose to work.
With endless positions now available for virtually every job role, candidates can afford to be more particular about things like company culture, benefits, and even employer branding. If you want to attract, engage, and retain the best chefs , it’s time to update your strategy.
Here are several steps to get you started.
1. Your Hospitality Employer Brand
How appealing is your business to a potential chef ? Your employer brand is what separates you from all of the other hospitality businesses competing for the same talent. It’s how you ensure you appeal to your candidates with excellent salary and benefit options, a sense of meaning, and shared values.
It is well recognised that employer branding is essential to success in today’s hiring landscape. Yet countless hospitality businesses are still struggling to position themselves effectively to fill their chef roles. So, what do you need to do?
Start by defining what makes chefs actually want to work with you. Ask your team members what convinced them to stick with your business over the years.
- Do you give them more autonomy over the menu?
- Opportunities for development and growth?
- Maybe you show more empathy and support to your team than most businesses, reducing the risk of burnout.
Once you know what makes you special, highlight this to your recruiting partner, put it on your website, in job descriptions, and in the content you share across social media.
2. How Consistent Are You Online?
Having a great employer brand is fantastic when you want to attract top talent for your chef roles, but it can’t deliver results unless you’re also positioning your branding in front of the right people. A strong digital presence is essential for any business in today’s landscape.
After all, around 79% of job seekers are using social media in their job search today, and countless candidates also use the web to search for reviews and insights into the company culture of an employer they are considering joining.
Make sure your website offers a behind-the-scenes view of everything you do as a business. Outline your values (what you believe in), how you aim to serve your customers and your goals to capture the interest of your candidates. At the same time, it’s worth ensuring you have a consistent presence on all the social channels your candidates may use. Don’t forget to assess and update your appearance on job review boards too.
3. Utilise Your Existing Employees
Your current hospitality staff members aren’t just crucial to the performance of your business when it comes to making sales and generating revenue. They can also help you to attract new talent.
Give your employees a voice that provides potential candidates with insights into your company culture and the experiences you offer.
Share stories about your staff member’s achievements on your website and social media pages. Ask team members to share links to your recent job postings when they’re active online, to help expand your reach.
4. Focus on Candidate Care
While the priorities of each chef in the current hospitality landscape can vary, they searching for one thing: empathy. They want to see evidence the employer they work with is going to keep their best interests in mind.
How can you do this?
By implementing strategies for better candidate care into your hiring process. Think about how you can make interviews more efficient and straightforward, by offering video and remote sessions, as well as face-to-face conversations.
Ask yourself how you can engage your candidates, by gamifying the hiring process with challenges and competition. Think about how you can streamline the selection journey, by using standard operating procedures to narrow down options.
Remember to implement ways of staying consistently connected with your candidates throughout the hiring process too. Regular communication is key to a good candidate experience.
5. Partner With A Specialist Recruitment Company
A hospitality recruitment partner could be the most powerful tool you have when it comes to attracting new chef talent. Not only will they help to position your business in front of the right candidates across a multitude of job boards, social media channels, and in-person events, but they can also help you to build a comprehensive talent pipeline.
A recruitment consultant and their company can work with you to consistently seek out talented professionals you can add to your pool, so you’re never lacking in options when you need a new employee. They’ll also know how to reach out to and engage passive candidates.
According to recent data from LinkedIn around 70% of the world’s talent is currently located in the “passive” market, waiting to be informed of better job opportunities. You won’t be able to find these people, through its highly likely your recruitment company will be connected to them already.
6. Update Your Job Descriptions
Your job descriptions for your chef roles are one of the first things potential candidates will examine. It helps when deciding whether they want to work with you. With this in mind, it’s important to ensure you’re conveying the right information. Don’t make the mistake of putting off talented chefs by listing too many unnecessary or “preferred” skills.
Highlight only the characteristics and qualities you know you’re going to need most. At the same time, make sure you’re avoiding any language in your descriptions that may show unintentional bias towards a specific audience.
When writing your descriptions, don’t forget to showcase reasons why your candidates might want to work for you. Draw attention to your unique company culture, your salary package, and even the available training opportunities in place.
Improve your Chances of Attracting Top Chefs
Most businesses know that chef talent is valuable but scarce. However, the unfortunate truth according to data from McKinsey is around 82% of people don’t feel they’re prepared to hire and recruit talented staff. Updating your hiring strategy with the steps above should improve your chances of attracting the right talent in today’s competitive landscape.
Remember, if you’re looking for an extra boost, the best strategy may be to start working with a recruitment company like KSB Catering and Hospitality Recruitment to expand your reach and unlock new opportunities.
