Recruitment and Selection Processes in the Hospitality Industry

Introduction

In recent studies, organizations are realizing that the generic skills portrayed in soft skills are increasingly important for a workplace to succeed. With human resources constantly finding the best option to carry out efficient recruitment, some selection process tools carry upon curiosity factors whether it is reliable, valid or even legal to test on individuals.

Recruitment and Selection

Recruitment is the first step in order to achieve highly qualified employees for the organization. The more successful an organization’s recruitment strategy, the stronger the applicants pool, thus, the stronger the resulting hired employees. There are a wide variety of recruitment strategies which include advertisements on newspapers and job websites such as SEEK and Indeed. Another recruitment strategy that is used in organizations is recruiting internal applicants for jobs. Not only do these individuals understand the values of the organization, they also possess the desired skills that meet the organizations standards.

 Selection is the second major step required in the staffing process. The goal of any selection systems is to identify which applicants have the knowledge, skills, abilities and other important factors that will be beneficial and suitable to the organization on order to succeed within the job role. (Power, 2014). Many challenges are faced in selecting employees such as legality, therefore having a well thought out and legally defensible selection system is crucial for organizational success. Selection tools used to assess candidates have improved onto more comprehensive systems such as interviews, work samples, application forms, written psychometric instruments and many more. Having these instruments to make sense, they must be tied to the results of the job analysis.

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Current Recruitment and Selection Issues Faced in the Industry

The critical imbalance between skilled labor supply and demand in the tourism and hospitality industries are well recognized. In this industry, skill sets are highly required by the employees to be able to carry out task and duties within the organization. Employers require hospitality staff to be quick earners, flexible, adaptable and transformable. They also are required to be able to work independently with minimum supervision and have creative aspects on the job. According to the McKinsey Global Institute report, it is said that a potential global shortage of around 38 million of high skilled and 45 million of middle-skilled employees are expected in the year 2020. Therefore, the importance of developing these required skills is unquestionable at international, national and institutional levels. Common issues that are found across the existing industry include high staff turnover, limited access to labor during peak seasons, limited focus on up-skilling and training, transportation limitations, differences in licensing arrangements between jurisdictions and many more. Skill gaps are a very common issue in the hospitality industry, where there is a difference between the markets demand and the current skills supplied by the organizations. For organizations to attempt to close the skill gaps by hiring unskilled entry-level employees will not only increase cost for extra training, but also some of those employees might take a longer time to reach the organizations standards. A number of labor issues has also risen over the years within the industry and one of it being hiring temporary workers. According to the American Staffing Association, retaining a full-time employee cost more than their salary, therefore having temporary workers who do not get benefits cut the organizations expenses drastically. They also cut down on cost of training because they ensure that these temporary workers already have the needed skill set to complete the specific job. Hiring international workers who might be illegal also address the current labor crisis faced in the industry. Unauthorized immigrant workers compromise a high market share in several hospitality occupations such as dishwashers, maids and even chefs.

Hard VS Soft Skills

Skills can be divided into two groups, the technical group and behavioral group. Hard skills fall under the technical group, where skills are the cumulative product of experience, training and education. Soft skills fall under the behavioral group, where it is a combination of a person’s aptitude and their values. Soft skills include communication skills, problem solving, self-management, decision making skills, cognitive skills and many more. Typically, employers look for a balance of hard skills and soft skills in a candidate, but in more recent surveys and studies it shows that employers are now more concerned about soft skills rather than hard skills. According to _ which was taken by a survey from the Harvard University, 80% achievements in careers are determined by soft skills and only 20% being hard skills. Organizations are realizing that the generic skills portrayed in soft skills are increasingly important for a workplace to succeed.

Psychometric Testing in the Selection Process

Many people are typically confused by the similarity between personality traits and soft skills. Personality traits is something that is either an existing aspect of your genetics or traits that have been developed through life experiences. Soft skills on the other hand are skills that can be learned through experience or training

Psychometric testing offers a wide range of psychometric test such as personality test, aptitude test and skill tests which are used to predict which applicants are likely to be successful

Conclusion

With the rapid growth of the hospitality industry, organizations are searching for individuals who are suitable to fit the role of the company. Recruitment and selection processes are also improving effectively and ensuring the best are chosen. With psychometric testing beginning to be a widely used tool in the selection process, it is important for employers to consider carrying out the test based on reputable research while withstanding scrutiny from a human rights perspective and is fair and reasonable to be taken.

Reference List

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• Power, M. (2004). A Quick Guide to Human Resource Testing. Camberwell, Victoria: Australian Council for Education Research. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=129420&site=ehost-live