Restaurant industry on hiring spree
By Darrell Smith, Sacramento Bee
Restaurant hiring outpaced overall employment growth nationwide year-over-year, and one in five eateries plans to increase its staffing in the second half of the year, according to the National Restaurant Association.
The industry trade group, in its quarterly employment report, said restaurant employment rose 2.7 percent nationally from June 2011 to last month, compared with the 1.3 percent overall increase in total employment nationwide.
Hudson Rhiele, an association senior vice president, called the hiring climate in his industry “an improved, but not optimal, environment.”
Still, there are positive takeaways for California’s $64 billion restaurant industry, the nation’s largest with more than 1.4 million employees.
Rhiele said restaurant hiring in California outpaced national hiring both in the industry and overall year-over-year.
Restaurants have always had trouble hiring good staff. One of the problems is there typically is only limited organization to their hiring procedures. A post in Craigslist.org produces an avalanche of responses. Managers are too busy to cull through them and they end up hiring someone who takes the initiative to walk in the door. There are a few online tools to overcome this inefficiency. They manage the flow of applicants and then provide screening and electronically deliver new hire paperwork. A well informed hire is worth time and money to a restaurant. Thanks to the Internet, old habits can, indeed, be broken.