Poor service at a restaurant can leave a bad taste in anyone’s mouth, even if the food was exquisite. This interrupts the flow of smoothly running a hospitality service and creates tension between guests and customer service.
Improve your customers’ dining experience by hiring quality employees. Conducting restaurant staff screening can help you find the best candidates.
Choosing the Right Applicant
Who do you consider “the right applicant”? Is it someone with a good work ethic, or maybe someone who has an inviting personality? Most answers would include one or both, but you may not want someone with a violent past interacting with families of diners. When deciding if an applicant is a right fit for your company, the decision must go beyond whether they have a good personality or great time-management skills. You must consider how that person’s skills and experience may affect your company and its future.
What background screening your restaurant candidates can tell you:
Criminal Record Searches
Screening can reveal a plethora of details surrounding your applicant’s criminal past. Your applicant may have several violent felony charges, a minor misdemeanor, or no history at all. Criminal Record Searches can give you a more comprehensive picture of your applicant’s past.
Verification Services
Verification services are often used by those in the restaurant and hospitality industries. An applicant with a successful record of previously working in service organizations can tell you whether or not they would have the right experience to work for your organization. Verification services can also provide reference checks that can contact an applicant’s previous supervisor or coworkers to tell you whether they are a good team player or effective at customer service.
Why Restaurant Staff Screening Is So Important
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- Protect employees and guests from workplace violence
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A person’s criminal past may impact your decision about whether to put someone in a customer-facing position or not.
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- Reduce the threat of employee theft and embezzlement
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Restaurants are full of moving money. On a daily basis, your staff handles your guest’s financial information as well as company funds. Background screening can help you select reliable staff that will help protect your assets.
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- Discourage dishonest applicants from applying
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The application process for any available restaurant position can be quite overwhelming. For any one position, you could have hundreds of applicants. You have a share of applicants who have college degrees, and others who simply apply just to apply.
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- Other businesses in the hospitality industry use background checks to firmly narrow down job applicants, but restaurants don’t normally use this process and that creates an overflow of job applicants for just a few open positions.
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- Putting a background screening process into effect at your restaurant gives applicants with a criminal past or bad intentions a chance to turn away before even applying.
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- Reduce costs of training and turnover
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The training process is exhausting for both managers and restaurant employees, especially those working in high-end facilities. Some companies spend several weeks just teaching their philosophy to aspiring hospitality professionals.
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- Studies show that for a manager making $40,000 a year, a company will spend between $20,000 to $30,000 in recruiting and training expenses. For employees like servers or cooks, the average cost of training is around $9,500.
Hiring the right staff can increase your chance of succeeding in the competitive food service industry. Quality service starts with quality employees, and by doing staff screening, you’ll be sure to land the ideal worker.