Driving Talent Acquisition in Hospitality through Effective Career Branding
- By Harri Insider Team | July 13, 2023
A business’s ability to acquire new talent is partially dependent on career branding. Highly effective career branding catalyzes the acquisition of talent in restaurants, hotels, and other businesses in the hospitality industry. Career branding combined with employer branding and the proper use of technology amounts to a powerful force to lure in top-notch talent.
Moreover, a robust Employee Value Proposition (EVP) serves as the icing on the metaphorical cake of employee attraction and retention. Career branding that attracts talent ultimately helps to retain those all-important difference-makers who add to the bottom line for years to come.
Significance of Talent Acquisition
Your ability to acquire new talent is central to your company’s long-term success. Though the hospitality industry has a relatively high turnover, acquiring the right talent significantly reduces that turnover. The best hospitality business owners and managers are aware that their company’s success across posterity depends on the ability to pivot accordingly. Recognize there are new and unique challenges arising in the context of attracting and retaining the best employees, zero in on career pathing and your Employee Value Proposition.
Even enhancing brand clarity makes your restaurant or hotel different from the pack, helping you attract candidates who have the potential to make a meaningful difference to the bottom line. A sound plan for altering your strategy and taking action as necessary helps your business connect with coveted employees and continuously evolve as the dynamics of the employment market take shape.
The process of talent acquisition requires patience and a willingness to change. Take full advantage of the industry’s best recruitment technology for automating laborious components of the hiring process and you’ll have invaluable data at your disposal that helps you make the right decisions.
Talent acquisition centers on putting the optimal employees in the right roles, propelling the business to new productivity heights, and capturing more market share. Recruiting is different in that it is a reactionary means of filling open job positions with temporal efficiency. In contrast, talent acquisition is a proactive approach to adding new employees to the pipeline for success in the years and decades to come.
Develop a network in your industry and unique sector through conferences, web-based discussion boards, and other get-togethers both in-person and online to connect with those who have the potential to help your business add new talent. Make a concerted effort to onboard the candidates who appear to be the best fit. Pinpointing the best candidates and convincing them to accept your job offer requires a promotion of your unique workplace culture’s merits. This challenge is oftentimes best accomplished through the use of a career website and portal.
Even maintaining a presence on employment platforms will help bolster your brand in the eyes of those who are seeking employment or connected to job-seekers. Check prospect references, always interview candidates before extending an offer, and take full advantage of applicant tracking systems complete with evaluation tools to whittle down the field of candidates to the best of the best.
Talent acquisition and retention require a strategic onboarding of the new additions to your team. Streamline the onboarding process to the best of your ability, use tech tools to facilitate a smooth onboarding, and continue to touch base with new hires throughout the onboarding process to get a sense of how they are progressing.
Talent acquisition strategies personalized to your company’s unique hiring needs make a world of a difference. As an example, bulk hiring in which several candidates are hired in one fell swoop with the assistance of talent acquisition software makes it easy to fill the ranks through automated means, ultimately selecting the best possible fit with the use of data.
Internal hiring makes talent acquisition that much easier. Though internal hiring requires permissions through the talent acquisition system, the ongoing encouragement of your current contributors to add to their skill sets makes it that much easier to promote them through the ranks.
In the end, talent acquisition software makes recruiting all the more strategic and better tailored to the aims of your organization. This approach ensures restaurants and hotels can pinpoint the optimal candidates for open positions along with passive potential hires who might be a good fit down the line. The talent acquisition process also extends all the way to the onboarding phase.
By recognizing that extending an offer is only one piece of the puzzle, focus on the importance of comprehensive onboarding with retention in mind, you’ll make the most of the time and effort you’ve invested in your new hires. Above all, do not lose sight of the fact that nearly one-quarter of employee turnover occurs within the initial month and a half of employment.
The Power of Career Branding
Career branding is an underrated component of acquiring and retaining “rainmaker” contributors to a hospitality industry business. Strategic employer branding maximizes talent attraction, setting the stage for a mutually beneficial relationship across posterity. Branding in the context of careers is similar to branding in the context of marketing with the difference being one targets employees and the other targets consumers.
Recognize the employment market’s dynamics are changing, alter your branding strategy accordingly and you’ll succeed in establishing inroads with the best candidates. Even slight alterations to your branding effort have the potential to amount to a significant advantage, helping your business attract difference-making employees. Continue to update your branding strategies as time progresses, focus on how your company boosts employee well-being and you’ll succeed in attracting hardworking contributors. Pave new paths for employees to climb the ladder and word will spread about your business’s merit-based promotions.
Showcase your brand through a clear presentation. Every last detail of the hiring process from the subtleties of the descriptions of the open roles to onboarding new additions and beyond matters a great deal.
Take a step back from your current perspective to view the company’s online presence from that of a job seeker. Conduct an online search of search engines and social media platforms to get a sense of how the company is seen by outsiders. If you notice inconsistencies such as variations in font, logo, or color, make those brand symbols uniform for a cohesive brand footprint both on and off the web.
Harri is here to help your restaurant, hotel or other hospitality industry business attract new talent. We help companies boost their reputation to potential hires, maximize brand visibility and connect with the best candidates for open positions.
Our technology empowers your business:
- Broadcast new roles across multiple channels
- Utilize employee referral links to take advantage of existing networks and reward ambassadors of your brand
- Customize the flow of new applicants
- Engage candidates through automated chats.
This is a golden opportunity to put the spotlight on your brand, showing what it means to work at your enterprise.
Harnessing Technology for Talent Attraction
Technology is changing the way businesses attract new talent. Use the right talent acquisition software and you’ll reap the rewards in the short term and also in the years to come. Tech has advanced to the point that it is now possible to improve career branding through web-connected computers.
Harri makes it easy to build and maintain a talent pipeline. Seize the opportunity to prime your talent pipeline pump with the use of our industry-best talent acquisition software and you’ll find dozens or even hundreds of potential difference-makers who suit your unique hiring criteria. This feat is possible with the use of smart filters along with customized applications.
Harri’s integrated tools for talent acquisition empower businesses like yours to connect with prospects, add them to the ranks, and keep them engaged for retention’s sake. Our talent acquisition software streamlines the employee recruitment process from beginning to end, empowering you to accurately screen, interview, and onboard new hires through a holistic applicant tracking system. Our tech is even advanced to the point that it protects documents pertaining to new hires through an evergreen management system.
Building a Compelling Employee Value Proposition (EVP)
Employee Value Proposition, or EVP for short, is the value offered to prospective hires, similar to the value offered to prospective employees. Every business must offer something of value to prospects to convince them to accept employment offers. Improve your EVP and you’ll maximize the attractiveness of your brand and find it is that much easier to add new talent.
Tips to create a powerful EVP for the hospitality industry
Let’s take a quick look at a couple of tips that will help your hotel or restaurant build a robust EVP.
Focus on Clarity
Transparency is key to building and maintaining trust. Communicate your brand’s values when posting job ads and interviewing candidates to give candidates a sense as to whether their personal values match those of your organization.
Use an Analytics Platform
Our analytics platform designed specifically for hospitality industry businesses is mutually beneficial to employers and employees. Our technology gathers, processes, and analyzes data on your behalf, helping you identify trends and provide opportunities accordingly.
Strive for Constant Improvement
Success is only temporary, regardless of your niche in the hospitality industry. Make a concerted effort to improve your EVP, refine your employer branding strategies, and maintain an open mind. Keep your finger on the pulse of the industry’s human resources to get a sense of what attracts talented candidates.
Above all, embrace creative approaches to connecting with the best candidates on the market, making it clear that your human resources specialists are willing to think outside of the box to foster unity and success for the collective as a whole. As an example, emphasising the benefits you offer employees in interviews – such as health and wellness programs, or generous holiday packages – has the potential to make the difference between prospects accepting and rejecting offers.
Harri: Transforming Hospitality Through a People-First Approach
Harri is here to help you prioritize human capital. After all, it is the people who make hospitality businesses go. We provide an industry-best employee experience platform for hotels and restaurants throughout the United States and the United Kingdom.
Whether you are looking for guidance in engaging employees, scheduling, hiring, tracking applicants, or onboarding, our platform will help. We serve more than 20,000 hotels and restaurants throughout the world.
Request a Demo today to find out how Harri’s platform will help your business reach its potential.