Restaurants are known for turnover, registering higher than most private sector industries. According to the National Restaurant Association, the restaurant industry is the largest employer of teenagers, employing 1.7 million U.S. teens, representing one-third of that young demographic. Coming in a close second are students, representing 28% of restaurant employees. Further, restaurants hire for seasonal staffing. For example, restaurants hire additional 500,000 employees during the busy summer season.

These hiring decisions contribute to the rapid turnover rate for restaurants. In 2018, the turnover rate in the restaurant-and-accommodations sector rose to 74.9%, representing the fourth consecutive year that the turnover rate topped 70% and the highest level since the 2008-2010 recession. That’s a lot of employees through the revolving door of food and drink establishments.

These high restaurant turnover rates can wreak havoc on a restaurant’s success and profitability. According to QSR Magazine, turnover costs for a single general manager can reach $14,000. And, that figure doesn’t account for soft costs, such as poor customer service and bad reviews on Yelp. Additionally, unhappy staff may not show up to work or put in minimal effort, demonstrating their lack of accountability and dedication, and negatively impacting your business.

With a tight labor market and more competition for talent, how can restaurants hire quality employees, whether they’re looking for a bartender, a busboy, or a front of the house? Let’s delve into using restaurant pre-employment tests to help identify top candidates.

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Look for Essential Qualities

Before you can build a successful restaurant team, you need to determine which roles need to be filled and what qualities are required for those roles. For example, the essential conditions you need will differ depending on whether you’re hiring for a cook, server, shift manager, or dishwasher.

Additionally, depending on the size and type of restaurant, the required qualities and capabilities may change. You may need specific skills at a local family pizza hangout, where you may require additional qualifications for an upscale French restaurant.

Once you identify who you need to hire, outline the requirements and responsibilities for each position. Overall, you need to look for candidates with the customer service experience. Depending on the job, you may also need to assess skills in hospitality, teamwork, checkout procedures, sanitation and safety concepts, or serving drinks.

During the hiring process, you can incorporate the restaurant customer service skills test, helping you measure candidates’ capabilities objectively. By using either off-the-shelf questions or by personalizing your own assessment based on your restaurant, you can better estimate customer service skills while creating a list of top candidates.

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Assess Situational Awareness

In addition to analyzing a candidate’s skills and capabilities, you should also assess that candidate’s situational awareness. Whether your open position is for the back of the house or customer-facing, you can gain insight into a candidate’s abilities by placing them in a real-life situation.

For example, you can create simulations for your management team that measures time management, leadership, or communication skills. Through situational awareness simulations, you can better observe a candidate’s empathy, adaptability, and customer problem-solving skills. These capabilities aren’t evident from an application or a resume. By discerning a candidate’s abilities in real-life situations, you can make better hiring decisions, contributing to future retention of staff.

Increase the Speed of the Recruiting Process

To attract and hire top candidates for the restaurant industry, employers need to decrease the time to hire. The old phrase, “Hire Slow. Fire Fast” doesn’t apply to high competition for talent in today’s world. By incorporating restaurant pre-employment tests into your recruitment, you can reduce the time to hire by 60% while reducing the cost to hire by 70%.

Attracting quality candidates to your restaurant is only half the equation. You need to interview, assess, and hire them if they meet your standards. Efficiency is vital in all hiring, but never so much so as in the restaurant business. Pull superb talent into your business, knowing before their first day of work that they have the skills to succeed.

Interested in Skills Assessment Tests?

When you need to hire star talent, partner with the experts. eSkill has developed customizable pre-employment assessments tailored to the hospitality and customer service industries. With our quality predictive content, millions of candidates have been tested since 2003 with a perfect compliance track record. You can select from over 1,000 standard tests, or customize your own, from thousands of topics relevant to your restaurant establishment.

Learn more about the benefits of using eSkill’s skills tests and behavioral assessments to find qualified candidates quickly.

Request a demo and see how eSkill can help transform and innovate your recruiting.