With numerous online job boards and in-person applications, hiring managers are often inundated with hundreds of applicants for a position at their company. While hiring a housekeeping staff might sound like an easy job, it’s only the case if you’ve performed comprehensive research and know how to identify talented individuals who are dedicated to properly getting the job done.
Every hiring manager typically requires a systematic approach to hiring employees that will help them keep their establishment in top-notch shape, but the highly competitive market can make finding motivated individuals difficult.
Reports reveal that employee turnover costs around $1 trillion to businesses across the US every single year.
If you’re looking to hire qualified and motivated individuals for your housekeeping staff, you’re at the right place.
Read ahead to learn more about housekeeping staff talent acquisition and how you can hire employees that are best suited for your establishment, according to our recruitment agency professionals.
What Is Talent Acquisition?
We’ve all heard of “talent acquisition,” but what does it mean?
Talent acquisition is an approach to assessing and acquiring applicants or candidates to hire them for a company. Unlike recruitment, this strategic process helps recruitment professionals identify and analyze their requirements in the context of a business’s professional goals and then execute this strategy by evaluating, recruiting, and onboarding candidates.
This process is essential for businesses to find the most talented individuals for their teams.
Why is talent acquisition important?
Talent acquisition helps businesses find the right people that will help them scale their business exponentially and sustainably. A team of talented individuals best suited to the job description is a crucial element to any organization’s success and business plan.
With an unmotivated staff and low levels of productivity, any business is likely to struggle due to hindered efficiency, and this can even affect profit margins.
Your Guide to Talent Acquisition – Hiring the Right Housekeeping Staff
Every business owner knows that talent is the real driving force behind their company’s success. Talent acquisition is necessary because the cost of replacing an employee can be two times the employee’s annual salary and an organization with 100 employees that pays an average salary of $50,000 could face replacement costs of $660,000 to $2.6 million per year.
This is why business leaders need to rethink their talent acquisition strategies in order to succeed in this complex economic landscape.
Talent acquisition is usually a seven-step process that includes comprehensive research and final onboarding. Let’s take a deeper look at the different steps of talent acquisition.
#1 – Assessing Organizational Goals
One of the first steps of talent acquisition is assessing the organizational goals.
When you’re looking to hire a housekeeping staff, the main objectives typically include:
- Maintaining overall cleanliness of the entire resort or hotel
- Effectively performing cleanliness duties promptly
- Using high-quality and safe cleaning supplies and chemicals
- Managing linens and laundry
- Knowing tried-and-true techniques to clean and maintain rooms
- Knowing how to control pests
- Taking care of the furniture, fixtures, and fittings at the entire hotel
Different divisions at a hotel usually have different cleaning and maintenance requirements. Here is a layout of the housekeeping department in a hotel.
- The Executive Housekeeper Office: This is where the administrative work is carried out
- Laundry Area: This is where the washing, ironing, and dry cleaning processes are carried out
- Housekeeping control desk: The housekeeping control desk is supposed to be operational and accessible 24 hours a day. The entire housekeeping staff reports to this department at the end of their shift, and this desk includes storage shelves, notice boards, and registers
- Linen room: The linen room is where bed sheets, pillowcases, towels, etc., are collected, stored, or carried out to the required places
- Uniform room: The uniform room is where the staff stores their uniform
- Housekeeping stores: The housekeeping store is another storage area where the cleaning equipment and guest supplies are kept
- Tailor room: This room is where the staff stitches or repairs uniforms and linens
#2 – Sourcing Options from Various Pools of Talent
Once you have an idea about your organizational goals, it’s time to locate potential candidates who are best suited to your organization.
How can you source from a wide pool of talent?
Start by transforming your diversity hiring practices. Diversifying the workforce is a highly effective way to boost business. A report by McKinsey reveals that companies in the top quartile for racial, ethnic, and gender diversity are likelier to have financial returns above the industry mean.
Another report by Gartner suggests that differences in age, gender, ethnicity, and other dimensions lead to high performance, and 75% of organizations with an inclusive and diverse frontline team are likely to exceed their financial targets.
Economic Forum also reports that companies with diverse teams drive 45% of their average revenue from innovation, whereas companies with below-average diversity only drive 26%.
So, ensure that you’re designing strategies that attract a diversified workforce.
Another way to source from a wide pool of talent is by leveraging software-assisted recruiting. AI-powered recruitment software can help you manage large candidate volumes and streamline the recruitment process. From sourcing to selection and hiring, recruitment software will provide you with an end-to-end hiring solution, so you don’t have to worry about managing lengthy paperwork and evaluating every candidate ever again.
When you have access to a larger talent pool, you will better be able to understand each candidate beyond their resume.
#3 – Attracting Qualified Candidates
Talent acquisition specialists and recruitment consultants are all going through a similar predicament: The Talent Shortage, the Great Reshuffle, or the Great Resignation.
Recruiting and retaining top talent for several professional roles has become challenging. According to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, 15.11 million people were employed in the hospitality industry from 2009 to 2022, but this changed in 2020 once the pandemic hit.
The tight labor market and the skill gap due to role specificity are some of the main reasons why it’s become very hard for organizational leaders to find qualified and motivated employees.
So how can you find top talent for your establishment?
Start by thinking outside the box and searching for innovative research tools other than LinkedIn and CRM. Resources like Stack Overflow, GitHub, or even complex Boolean searches can help you tap into a wider talent pool.
The next step is to sell the opportunity. Make sure you’re highlighting what makes your company stand out from your competition. Mention specifics and provide candidates with details about how you will provide the candidate with clear goals and how they can help you achieve them. Remember to also tell candidates about your establishment’s pain points because it isn’t realistic to paint a rosy picture where everything is perfect.
Enhance your company’s brand and speak candidly to the candidates to be more engaging instead of keeping the applicants in the dark. Have a cohesive package prepared along with benefits, pay, mission, and the company culture since this is one of the first things the candidates might want to look at when they’re applying at your establishment.
The key to finding and attracting top talent is prioritizing the candidate experience. The employment movement faltered during the pandemic, which led to a major transformation in the employee market and employees rethinking what they expect from their jobs.
A 2021 study by IBM’s Institute for Business Value reveals that 43% of employees put career advancement opportunities and 51% put work-life balance at the top of the list when applying to a new workplace, along with employer ethics and values, compensation, and benefits.
This is why organization leaders need to put the needs of employees at the forethought of their acquisition planning. Even reports such as the Better Workplaces on a Budget Recommendations show that one of the major reasons why employees leave a company is the lack of career advancements and developments.
#4 – Interviewing and Evaluating
Now that you’ve attracted qualified candidates, it’s time to assess and evaluate them to see if they have the skills that meet your organizational goals.
Here are some skills you can look for in a qualified housekeeper.
- Detail-oriented and attentive: Housekeepers should be able to pay attention to each and every corner of a resort or hotel and ensure that everything is in the right place
- Flexible and adaptable: Highly qualified housekeepers should have the flexibility and adaptability to provide customized solutions to every guest at the resort
- Good communication skills: Effective communication is also another important skill that makes a housekeeper more successful at their duties
- Organized and proper time management: Time management and organization skills help housekeepers improve productivity
Here are some things you should keep in mind when interviewing candidates.
- Do they seem competent?
- Do they look like they can follow the rules?
- Are they willing to understand the organization’s way of doing things?
We recommend asking these questions to ensure that the employees you hire are going to stay with you long-term or not.
#5 – Checking References
Another important detail to keep in mind during the talent acquisition process is to thoroughly check references. Reach out to the applicant’s former managers and do a proper background check along with work history and criminal history before you finalize the offer.
#6 – The Final Selection
The final selection process is a collaborative effort between human resources, the talent acquisition specialist, the hiring manager, and other teams. Some companies also include a screening interview or call and a skills test to identify candidates best suited to the role.
Once the talent acquisition process has narrowed down to the best candidate, it’s time to extend them an offer. Don’t rush the final selection process because the candidate you hire can affect the overall performance of your company.
It is reported that 69% of corporations are struggling to find and retain qualified candidates because of the labor shortage and skill gap. Although with a proactive approach and effective talent acquisition, you can attract in-demand talent in no time.
#7 – The Onboarding Process
The hiring or onboarding process includes team introductions, resource sharing, providing benefit information, and sending welcome emails to help the new employees feel at home.
Some successful onboarding practices include.
- Giving out a welcome package: Providing your new employees with a welcome package will have a positive impact on the new hires
- Involve different team members: Make sure other team members, such as supervisors, managers, and senior leaders, are looking after the new hires and ensuring that they feel connected and comfortable working in the establishment
- Get the paperwork out of the way: Make sure to get the paperwork done as soon as possible, so the new employees aren’t spending their first day at work performing the mundane task of filling out documents. Encourage the new hires to work on paperwork such as direct deposit forms, employee handbook acknowledgment forms, tax forms, and nondisclosure agreements before they begin work
- Job shadowing: Job shadowing helps new employees develop a better understanding of the company culture and their duties. Help the new employees get used to the different departments in the resort or hotel to ensure they are better equipped to perform their roles.
Hire Qualified Candidates with Career Suitcase Today
Are you ready to hire motivated and professional candidates for your hotel or resort? Career Suitcase is your one-stop solution for hiring the most qualified employees.
Backed with an experience of over five decades in domestic and international hospitality recruitment, our team of experienced hospitality recruitment experts helps organizations identify passionate and motivated candidates that will help them scale their business.
Whether you’re searching for hotel recruitment services, a restaurant recruitment agency, a cruise line recruitment agency, or a hotel job consultancy, we are here to help. We also assist candidates in revamping their profiles to help them get shortlisted for their dream job.
So, if you’re looking for a hospitality management job or looking to hire high-performing employees for your hospitality business, partner with our hospitality recruitment experts today to get started.
Our recruitment services are available in Romania, Greece, Serbia, Croatia, Bulgaria, and Moldavia. Get in touch with us today for more information.