Why hospitality workers are the best people you are not hiring.

On the first day of January, my LinkedIn feed – mainly a collection of posts and updates from my colleagues in hospitality – is usually dominated by the singular message of welcoming in the new year and photos of hotels and restaurants heaving with festive business. This year, there were two main themes: “Happy New Year” (minus the photos) and “I’m looking for work”.

As it turned out, quite a few hospitality companies used 31st December 2020 as the effective date for redundancies; it is a date that does, for better or worse, symbolise new beginnings. Despite the inevitably sad connotations of redundancies over the festive season, the chosen date reflected the determination of many companies to delay redundancies for as long as they could, at least until after Christmas finished and many companies get back to work.

Whatever date they lost their job, almost 700,000 hospitality workers in the U.K. are now in this situation. Many – for various reasons, some more obvious than others – are sadly looking for a way out of the industry, period.

It can be challenging for hospitality workers to find new beginnings, especially if they have invested at least few years of their professional life in the sector before going for the career change. I do not want to dwell much on the reasons for this, but it is a mixture of mistaken belief that hospitality workers are unqualified, unskilled, or cannot offer transferrable abilities and sometimes, a sad, blanket-like stigma of this vibrant and exciting industry being somehow inferior to other ones. If you, or your company is hiring, here are a few reasons why you should bin any preconceptions about these amazing men and women and get them in for interviews or more:

1. They have great business acumen.

Hotels and restaurants have a transparent and simple operating model which everyone – from entry-level workers to managers – are heavily involved with. Thanks to a combination of convenience and staff shortages, line staff are often responsible for ordering, costings and sometime even whole P&L oversight. In other cases, there is multi-faceted interaction with ownership and even board-level employees across the whole hierarchy. Tie this in with thorough training and the high resilience that are part and parcel of the industry, then you have yourself an exceptionally commercially astute worker.

2. They are expert negotiators.

Whether it is upselling an expensive bottle of wine or talking an angry and tired business traveller into accepting a viewless standard room because their corner suite was oversold, you can guarantee that hospitality workers will seal the deal and relish the opportunity to do so. Not only can you expect hospitality workers to be masters of negotiation and persuasion, but you can also rely on them doing this with the utmost respect and understanding for the party across the desk – critical qualities in any such interaction.

3. They are creative.

Hospitality venues are giant, sparkling canvases on which a trillion different stories can be painted. The role of hotel workers is to make those stories come to life, using not just specific product knowledge, but also in carefully connecting the pieces of the jigsaw in line with the guest as a unique individual, thus creating lastingly memorable moments. It is easier said than done, however hospitality workers are not just creative but can creatively execute too. Even the simplest creative flair, such as preparing a favourite tea for the arrival of a hotel guest, needs careful planning and timing.

4. They are more flexible than gymnasts.

Hospitality workers have a chameleon-like ability to flick from one extreme to another, such as going from completing a soul-destroying stock take at the end of a long shift, to enthusiastically welcoming and serving a customer, all within a matter of seconds. They know how to – and the value of – making every second count (it is not just chefs that need to be masters of timing), understanding how not just to flex themselves, but corral the team and other departments to get the job done.

5. They have superhuman E.Q.

I saved the best until last. If your business has any interaction with anyone, then you need to hire hospitality workers. These wonderful folks know people like no-one else. They understand how everyone is different, how the first impression, the approach and sustaining rapport are not just four things, but four considerations with millions of approaches. Remember that looking after people is not just hospitality workers’ bread and butter, it’s often central to their values and or their raison d'être.

The above is not an exhaustive list of transferrable skills and abilities. I could also mention that hospitality workers are hardworking, smart, honest, sincere, culturally aware, natural leaders, team players, organised, confident and predisposed to work under pressure but hey, I don’t want to come across as biased, do I?