The hiring process is obviously important to every type of business – everyone needs to staff their operation! In the restaurant and foodservice industry, where service and speed are central to success, finding and keeping good employees is often the difference between a restauranteur driving a fancy new Mercedes to their place of business and someone who USED to own a restaurant driving an Uber to make ends meet while working part-time at Sam’s Club.
Later in your career, you will be expected to find and hire reliable, talented people for your team.
At the BEGINNING of your career, on the other hand, you are going to interview a LOT. You will fill out a LOT of applications and will probably submit a LOT of resumes.
Understanding what employers are looking for during interviews, while they are reading applications, and during the entire hiring process is the difference between getting a GOOD job that will advance your career and getting an OKAY job that will tide you over till something better comes along.
This series of posts talks about all the things you need to know about getting a good job that will build your career and employability skills. From reading job descriptions to writing a resume and cover letter to filling out applications and interviewing for the position… this is what you need to know to be successful.
The Interview
The job interview is an important hiring tool. Interviewers will interview many candidates to find the most suitable person for the position. Potential employees have a chance to “sell themselves” and to show the interviewer that they are the most suitable person for the position. Appearance, punctuality, and demeanor are important, as well as being fully prepared. Research the company and industry and practice answering and asking appropriate interview questions.
If an employer likes your cover letter and resume, you may be asked for a job interview. At the interview, that applicant meets with the employer to discuss qualifications for the job. This is the applicant’s opportunity to “show his or her stuff” in person to a potential employer. Do everything possible to make the interview a success.
This first impression to a potential employer will make the strongest statement about an applicant. Resumes and cover letters (or cover messages) will be remembered if the interviewer likes what he or she sees in the interview.
Writing for Money: Resumes, Cover letters, and Thank-you notes
A resume is a written summary of experience, skills, and achievements that relate to the job being sought. A resume is not a life story. It is like a short sales brochure that tells an employer why the applicant is the best person to hire for the job. When looking at a resume, ask, “If I were the employer, would I hire this person?”
In years past, people looking for work would send a cover letter along with their resume in the mail. While some companies still request – or even more rarely, require – a cover letter, a cover email is usually sufficient. The ability to write a cover email which will capture the attention of a human resource official or hiring manager? This is an essential skill.
Depending on your interests and focus, you might want to take a different route. You might create a portfolio-style resume: a collection of samples that showcases interests, talents, contributions, and studies. A portfolio displays an applicant’s finest efforts and is a good self-marketing tool to show potential employers. It can also show relevant courses, transcripts, certifications, and licenses the applicant might hold and is often used by higher level artisans, social media advertising professionals, marketers, pastry chefs, and the like.
A standard act of business courtesy is to send a quick follow-up thank you note to the person who interviewed you for a position. This last step in the interview process is an important one and can often spell the difference between GETTING THE JOB and being quickly forgotten.
The following posts explain how to go about putting together your resume, preparing a cover email, and sending a follow up thank you note.
Resumes
Resume Templates
Cover Emails
These days, the cover letter has been replaced by the “cover email” – although the same rules apply. Knowing how to send an appropriate email along with your resume is VITAL.
Thank-You Email
Your First Few Weeks
After you are hired, there will be some period of time before you are put on the schedule. During this time, you will have to complete some paperwork and go through some sort of Onboarding – the process by which you will be taught your new companies expectations, procedures, and culture.
These series of posts are to help you through the baby steps it takes to go from being a new hire to being an employee.
ONBOARDING
Your First 6 Months
Regardless of where you work, professionalism in the way you treat and interact your fellow employees (and supervisors!) and is a requirement to getting a good job and staying employed. In general, a positive, courteous attitude towards your responsibilities is important and can affect how people see you at work. These are the basics: how exactly do you ACT like a professional? What are the expectations?
Staying Employed: How to act like a professional (until you are one)
Most first-time employees unfortunately take some of the bad habits they got away with in high school into the workplace… and get themselves frustrated, frequently on the bad side of their boss’s temper, and usually, sooner or later… fired.
We don’t want this to happen to you. Better learn to at least PRETEND to be a professional until it becomes natural.
How Soft Skills Lead to Big Checks
You want to do more than just KEEP your job… you want to get ahead! Your workplace, interpersonal interactions have a strong – and very direct – ability to shape the perceptions that people have of you. And what people think of you? It will either EXPAND or CONSTRAIN your opportunities to move up.
You NEED to get better at these things.
To do this, you should strive to grow in four key areas:
- your ability to communicate clearly and to minimize obstacles to communication
- your ability to work with people of diverse cultures and backgrounds,
- your ability to work on a team, and
- your ability to accept correction, negative feedback, and constructive criticism.
These four concepts make up the majority of your professional interactions with coworkers and managers. Learn to do these well and you will be successful regardless of where you work. Fail to learn these and you will struggle your entire career.
Put simply, the way you treat others will make or break your likelihood of success in this or any other industry.
Lesson Planning
This is a month long project and culminates with students holding semi-real world interviews with industry volunteers. By the end, they should be familiar with every stage of the job hunt process, know how to interact professionally with interviewers, how to submit a written resume, cover email, and thank you email, how to describe themselves in both 30 seconds and in a three minute “elevator pitch,” and how to followup appropriately after the interview.
There are a lot of components, but the overall plan can be found here: