Like many employers in the hospitality sector, Poke House has been facing tough recruitment challenges. The restaurant chain, which specialises in the traditional Hawaiian dish, has stores across the UK, Spain, Italy and Portugal, usually receives applications from jobseekers online, over the phone or from people who drop CVs into one of its shops. But these traditional methods were not allowing the business to reach the right quality of candidate in the numbers it required.
UK co-country manager Robert Wickenden, explains: “It’s tough to hire great people into the food and beverage market at the moment. We’ve certainly been looking at upping the calibre of in-store hires but that requires a little bit more work from us to find the right people.”
The tight labour market, Brexit and an exodus of workers during the pandemic have all contributed to the issue. According to figures from the Office for National Statistics, the number of vacancies in the hospitality sector remains high and despite dropping to 132,000 in May, from 142,000 the previous month, the skills gap in the sector is still 48% higher than pre-pandemic levels.
It’s more immersive than a standard telephone interview
To alleviate the problem, Wickenden and his London team devised a careers workshop which aimed to give interested candidates a taste of work, assess their teamworking and offer successful applicants a role at the business. “An interview is a two-way process. So we wanted to show them what they would be doing, what a typical role with us involved and give them a chance to get to know some of the people that they would be working with,” he adds. “It was intended to be more immersive than a standard telephone interview.”
Last month, the company held the two-hour workshop in St Paul’s, London, advertising it as “the fastest job offer in the UK”. Although 20 people were booked in to attend, there were dropouts on the day. For Wickenden, this was all part of the test. “We purposefully decided to hold it on a Saturday at 10am because if you’ve got the gumption and the drive to turn up on a Saturday morning, you’d be willing to do the same for a shift,” he explains.
It was hoped that as many as 10 people would receive job offers by the end of the session but only two candidates progressed to trial shifts on the day. Despite the numbers, Wickenden considers the workshop a success. “We’re picky about who we’re looking for and we want to get the right people,” he says. “In this climate, service is king and we have to make sure that we’ve got people who are bubbly and knowledgeable about the product so our guests feel the service level has been top-notch.”
Speeding up the recruitment process
Wickenden claims that by condensing the application process to a single 2-hour session both the business and jobseeker save significant time. Rather than having to submit a written application and progress through several rounds of interviews, those steps were skipped and candidates found out on the day whether they would be offered a trial shift.
Moving forward, Poke House intends to host more of these recruitment sessions to reach new sources of talent and Wickenden believes they will be particularly useful when hiring for several positions at the same time, necessary when opening a new store, for example.
“This will save us a lot of time as it allows us to assess a lot of people very quickly, see how they interact and build a team,” he adds. “It also means those people who are successful already know each other before their first day and have a shared experience. It will definitely benefit us in the long run.”
It’s got to be authentic too; if everyone talks in company spiel, it’s not going to wash
But the company will make changes to the process when it runs the careers workshop again. Wickenden found its first attempt at this novel way of recruiting to be “too formulaic” and recommends using an icebreaker at the start to encourage people to relax. “I think we were a little bit wordy and focused on giving them information when actually the whole point of the day is to understand their personality,” he says. “If you bombard people with information, that can turn people off.”
He believes it can be a useful recruitment tool for any business, no matter what sector it operates in. “I don’t see why it shouldn’t work across multiple industries,” Wickenden says. “It just requires some tailoring to suit your objectives and what you’re looking for in various candidates.”
He recommends creating scenarios where you can assess how candidates interact, rather than focusing on interview questions. You should also set clear objectives on what you want to achieve and the skills you’re looking for. “It’s got to be authentic too; if everyone talks in company spiel, it’s not going to wash,” he adds.
But there are limitations. “We did it because we are on a hiring drive and we have a large number of open positions,” Wickenden explains. “If you are looking to fill just for one position, it might be more difficult to justify because you’d be pitching people against one another.” For those scenarios, the traditional interview process might still be better.
This article is part of our Going Against the Grain series, which tells the stories of companies bold enough to break business norms and try out new ideas. To explore the rest of the series, head here.
