When you have positions to fill in your business and are looking for hospitality staff, you want the best candidates for the job. Pre-employment screening provides you with invaluable insight into your candidates’ skills, abilities, and experience as well as criminal background and other issues that may not be readily accessible through a resume or application. Your hospitality staffing agency should be screening your candidates thoroughly to ensure that you get exactly what you need. Your business depends on it.
INDUSTRY-SPECIFIC SKILLS, INTERVIEWING AND ASSEMENTS
An integral part of candidate screening is interviewing and skills assessments that focus on abilities and skills specific to the job. Most agencies use these assessments but they tend to be more focused on the broader industry requirements than taking a more targeted approach for specific jobs. This may hit some of the markers that you need for your hospitality staffing needs, but it likely falls a little short by failing to identify candidates for the jobs you need to fill.
The more in depth pre-hiring assessments go, the less likely you are to make a hiring mistake. In fact, you have a much higher chance or hiring a superior candidate that is exactly what you need for the job. Another advantage of targeted assessments is that they provide more objectivity and allow you to see beyond a resume. All too often a great candidate is overlooked because their resume doesn’t meet certain criteria. As you well know, there is more to a great hospitality worker than their resume. The information contained there is only part of the equation.
VERIFICATION AND CREDENTIALING FOR HOSPITALITY STAFFING
Face it - anyone can put anything on a resume. It is a very common practice that may get a person hired but then spell disaster when they are asked to perform the job required tasks. Your hospitality staffing agency should take the time to verify your candidates’ information, including:
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• Education
- • Job experience
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• Past employment
- • Volunteering
It can also verify other claims as well. They will talk to the candidate’s references and ensure that every claim on the resume is valid. That way, you will have no questions – and no unpleasant surprises.
Credentials are another issue that can be problematic. Your agency should check all credentials and certifications to ensure that they are current and in good standing. Even if there are no required certifications in the industry as a whole, but you have certain requirements for your facility, the agency should still take the time to check. This is a very important step and it sometimes requires that the agency go above an beyond to provide good service to you, but it is what you need to make sure you have the right staff for the job.
BACKGROUND CHECK INCLUDING CRIMINAL RECORD
A background check should be a part of your agency’s pre-employment screening. This is very important in hospitality because so many of the workers have contact with the public. Employment verification, education verification, and reference checks do fall under this umbrella, but for the purposes here we will focus on drug testing and criminal record. An agency that does these tests ensures that you will have a staff that is not only compliant, but also safe.
A criminal record check will help protect your business and your brand. Your people are the face of your business and you want to hire the right people. While you may choose to hire someone who has a criminal record, you certainly want the option to make that decision by being informed of that record at the onset. Some people don’t do that. They try to hide a criminal past and this is exactly what a criminal record check does for you. It alerts you to information that candidates attempt to hide. Then you can decide if you want to move forward with someone who was not completely honest with you – or if you want to move on to the next candidate.
When you are looking for hospitality staffing solutions, Alrich Hospitality Staffing can get the job done. Our professional, knowledgeable staff will listen to what you need and thoroughly screen applicants to make sure that you get just what you need. Contact us today to find out how we can help you.
