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HCS Executive Search Acknowledge your ignorance. This statement is not meant to be insulting. It took me many years to acknowledge my ignorance. I thought I knew everything there was to know about recruiting in the hospitality industry. I graduated from UNLV with a BS degree in Hospitality Administration. I worked my way up and became a GM. I was a successful GM for 12 years with Embassy Suites and Doubletree. I earned my CHA, I took on corporate responsibility, and I hired and trained GM’s. I trained many HR directors and taught Hospitality Management courses and made presentations on recruiting. In the early stages of my career as a Hotelier, I thought I didn’t need Hotel Headhunters. As recruiting got tougher I benefited by my relationship with Hotel Headhunters and I thought I knew how to deal effectively with them. Now I realize that when I was a Hotelier I had no clue how to effectively deal with Hotel Headhunters. Having years of experience as a Hotel Headhunter I can fill you in on a few secrets that can help you successfully fill your vacant positions. You need help with recruiting. Even if you have a full time recruiting staff in your HR department a Hotel Headhunter can help you recruit effectively and save you time and money. The candidate pool is shrinking and the demand for hotel employees is increasing. The babyboomers are beginning to retire, unemployment is at historical lows and more hotel rooms are being build everyday. Placing an add in the classified section of the newspaper produces applicants that are typically unqualified, unhappy, or unemployed. Then you have to invest time screening all these newspaper applicants and corresponding with them or risk damaging your reputation by not corresponding with them. After all one of them may be the daughter of your biggest client. Confidentiality. Even when your in house recruiters operate tactfully and with discretion they can cause embarrassment to your company and candidates and may upset customer and competitive relationships. A Hotel Headhunter can contact successfully employed executives in other companies who may not even be looking for another position and your company can remain anonymous until real interest in confirmed. Perhaps you have a Manager who is causing more damage than he/she is worth although you don’t want the Manager or others in the company to learn you are recruiting his replacement. A Hotel Headhunter can handle this search for you confidentially and immediately. If you hold off on recruiting you incur the costs of lost revenue, asset neglect, increase costs, tarnishing of your reputation with guests, clients, & the community, turnover of good employees and the list could be increased ad infinitum. Commit to the Hotel Headhunter. It is in the employer’s best interest to develop a long-term relationship with a Hotel Headhunter. This relationship should be a partnership. As partners you have the same goal and that is to recruit the most suitable candidate. It is not in your best interest to compete with the Hotel Headhunter. Be sure to exhaust any internal recruiting before turning the assignment over to the Hotel Headhunter. If a Hotel Headhunter invests weeks recruiting, surfacing, screening, interviewing, checking references and you then tell him you decided to eliminate the position or promote from within you have damaged the relationship by wasting the Headhunters most valuable commodity and that is time. The Hotel Headhunter will become more valuable to you as he learns what you are looking for in a candidate, about your culture, environment and core values. Handled properly your relationship with a Hotel Headhunter can be a vital component in the success of your organization, handled improperly your company may become a preferred recruiting source for Hotel Headhunters. Do not hire more than one Hotel Headhunter on any given assignment. I realize it is scary putting all your eggs in one basket. It is contrary to your previous training that told you to get as many lines in the water as possible if you want to catch the best fish. The fact is that the Hotel Headhunter will have all the lines possible in the water for you including a partnership with the other Hotel Headhunters. If a Hotel Headhunter is foolish enough to accept an assignment from you knowing other Hotel Headhunters are working on it he will be motivated by speed and quantity not quality. He will not take the time to effectively screen, eliminate, check references… and now you the employer are wasting time reviewing resumes of candidates who may not be interested or qualified. Three candidates. Don’t ask the Hotel Headhunter to forward you more than three resumes. I know you are used to reviewing a stack of resumes from other sources but if the Hotel Headhunter presents you with more than three resumes or referrals you are not getting your moneys worth. The Hotel Headhunter may review a hundred or more potential candidates and his job is to save you the time by screening and eliminating the candidates. Of coarse if you are not happy with any of the three candidates you have every right to ask for more. As your relationship with the Hotel Headhunter improves you may want to see only one candidate at a time on any given assignment. Three Weeks. Give the Hotel Headhunter a good three weeks to surface the most suitable candidate. He may get lucky and surface a winner sooner but traditionally the process takes a good three weeks and rushing the recruiter may cost you the most qualified candidate. Understand the Hotel Headhunters recruitment process. Once terms are agreed upon the Hotel Headhunter will develop an “Opportunity Profile” on the position. The employer will typically approve this document which contains information on the company, the position, the qualifications etceteras. A good Hotel Headhunter will have a database of thousands of potential candidates. Upon the approval of the Opportunity Profile the Hotel Headhunter will have his Database Recruiter Query the database which will typically produce about 40 potential candidates. The database recruiter will take the time to email, fax; leave phone messages for and finally speak with these 40 potential candidates to see if they or any colleagues they know are interested in the position. At the same time the Hotel Headhunters Network Recruiter and Internet Recruiter are going through the same process. At this point a week or more in to the assignment there may be as many as 100 or more potential candidates. Next comes the screening, telephone interviewing, reference checking and selection of the top candidate(s). Now you can see why you should allow the Hotel Headhunter three weeks as outlined above.
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