Finding people to hire right now is a tight competition. Finding service workers, customer service staff for retail and hospitality business is cut-throat to put it mildly! Small business owners, (even larger industry), are feeling the worker shortage pains. Business owners are desperate, and that's not where you want to be.  

 

You don’t want to be desperate. We want to be desirable. 

 

 

Ok, reality check. Maybe you are a bit desperate right now. . . The market is tight!! However, if you ARE in the desperate mode it’s time to move out of it. 

 

How do we move from desperate to desirable when we’re really needing to attract excellent front line customer service staff? 

 

Imagine having a wait list of qualified people who want to work with you. Imagine having new hires that are up and running, confident and competent with service, in record time. 

 

It can be done! Here's how:

 

Give yourself more time, more of an on-ramp, more runway. There’s not much worse a feeling than two weeks before a big event you receive, out of the blue, a surprise notice that your employee is moving on. Murphy’s Law seems to dictate that people get sick or give notice at the most inopportune times, especially in those front-line hospitality positions. But Murphy doesn’t have to rule the roost and cause so much stress. A mindset shift, along with some interesting numbers, helped me to have a much better relationship with Murphy!

 

When I shifted my mindset to looking far in advance, it significantly reduced my stress AND increased my results. This tip greatly helps in moving from desperate to desirable!

 

If you’ve a desirable place to work that can be communicated LONG before the interview. When I was in the desperate camp, I would interview anyone and everyone. When I started this mindset shift and gave myself much more time to find and attract the RIGHT fit staff, I also added steps to let potential employees figure out, on their own, whether or not we might be a good fit.

 

Setting up so that potential employees can ‘self-filter’ saves an incredible amount of time, stress, and money. By the time a person sat in front of me (was granted an interview), they were highly motivated, knowing the expectations of the job and understanding both my team and business values.

 

For me, one of my core values was continuing education both on and off the job, individually and as a team. In my job description I communicated this, noting they’d need their OLCC servers permit, food handlers license, and complete 3-hour on-line hospitality course.

 

Was it amazing to have a person come in for their FIRST interview with all of these requirements completed and in hand? 

 

Well, yes it was! 

 

I felt like I had arrived, kicking Murphy out the back door. It greatly helps the move from desperate to desirable!