Want to improve your customer service ranking? You may need to staff up!

Amazon.com, a perennial high-scorer for its customer service, recently announced it would add new service jobs in Huntington, W.Va., and Grand Forks, N.D.

An Amazon spokesman said the company wanted to create “the Earth’s most customer-centric company.”

Who wouldn’t want to be recognized as being one of the best companies for customer service? (And, as a point of clarification, Friday’s list was indeed supposed to be the best — and technically, being the worst of the best is still something noteworthy.)

The question, is: How do you know you need to add more staff?

If your customers complain. Long call center wait times can be measured, both internally and externally. If your customers are fuming about having to spend half an hour on “hold” then your call center might be understaffed. Similarly, if your employees are sending out a high volume of form letters that don’t address the actual problem — and generating complaints because of it — it could be a sign of trouble.

If your customer-service department is overtasked. If your customer-service jobs are burnout positions — places where attrition rates are far higher than in the rest of the company, then that could also be a sign that it’s not adequately staffed. If the folks in the service department complain about low morale and long hours, there may just be too few of them.

If your service scores are slipping. Falling scores from your customers can also be a sign that your service department isn’t pulling its weight. If your company’s marks have fallen off the charts recently, check the staffing levels in the service department. Have you recently downsized there, too? If so, that could be your problem.

Bringing in new employees may not solve your customer service woes, but it could address them in a meaningful way. And who knows, you might someday refer to your company as “the Earth’s most customer centric.”

Your customers would like that.

Christopher Elliott is a consumer advocate, syndicated columnist and curator of the On Your Side wiki. He also covers customer service for the Mint.com blog. You can follow Elliott on Twitter,Facebook or his personal blog, Elliott.org or email him directly.

With a new crop of online video services conducting job interviews becomes a much smoother and faster process. This is a great help within the Hospitality Industry not only for Hospitality Recruiters but for Restaurant Managers as well.

Perry Blacher has a knack for finding talent. His only problem is sometimes the best potential employees aren’t located across the street, but across an ocean or two.

As the CEO of Covestor, a global mirrored investment firm, Blacher isn’t about to fly candidates to his Londonor New York offices for an interview if he can help it. Instead, he uses Skype’s free video calling service to meet and interview candidates.

He says when a candidate turns up on Skype in a formal suit to interview for a job at his Web company, it can indicate a mismatch. That’s just one of the things he looks for when hiring for a culture fit, he says. “Maybe over dressing is an inappropriate thing to do.”

“It’s as much about a good fit as it is about capability these days,” he says. “You can sort of see in people’s body language things like enthusiasm. Visual signals [are as important] as the things people say.”

Using Skype in London, Blacher recently interviewed aSan Francisco woman while simultaneously introducing her to employees in New York. Since Skype has a 10-person limit, that wouldn’t have worked had he wanted to get all 25 of his employees on the line, but it was enough for his needs at the time.

Toronto-based analyst Jon Arnold, a principal with J. Arnold and Associates, says using video for interviews and other business functions is growing exponentially.

“These things are really starting to make video such a common part of our vocabulary now. It’s almost like you’re getting to the point where you’re going to expect it, not so much that it’s a bonus. That’s how fast it’s moving,” says Arnold.

Of course, the free Skype client has some serious competition in this space.

For about $40-$50 a month per head (which is part subscription fee and part a per-minute charge), U.K.-based VuCall provides high-definition video conferencing for up to 100 people at a time and offers application sharing and speaker focus, which automatically switches the view to the person speaking.

And, VuCall’s spokesperson Bob Chambers says its service is more secure than Skype.

“Skype is a peer-to-peer system that basically relies on your PC being a part of the overall network solution. There is no overall central server or control unit that’s actually operating the system. In that sense, it’s inherently insecure,” says Chambers, adding that VuCall can encrypt a video call if needed, and can record video sessions that can be streamed to others at a later time.

The ability to record a video call can save recruiters time, which is often one of the great challenges in the interview process: reducing the total time to find candidates.

Some tools streamline the process better than others. For example, it might become apparent that an applicant whose resume looked so promising clearly is not a good fit with your organization. Some tools let you skip through recorded sessions.

Using a service such as Hyier, headquartered in Minnesota, or Utah-based HireVue, you can skip to the next recorded interview, which perhaps has already been rated by others involved in the hiring process. Another advantage is that, after you watch an interview, you can click on the candidate’s LinkedIn profile which has been attached to the interview file.

Human Resources Director Tracee Comstock, who works for Utah-based StorageCraft, a backup and disaster recovery software company, has used HireVue dozens of times in the last several months.

She says she can pull up recorded answers from different applicants back-to-back and then compare how each of them answered a key question.

“We typically ask candidates the same 15 questions and the tool allows us to review candidates in a 360-degree format. Skype-like services are in a live format and do not record the interview without an additional plugin. This makes it difficult to go back and truly compare the individual candidate’s responses,” says Comstock.

HireVue runs between $25 to $175 per interview depending on whether you have a subscription or not. One unique perk: you can brand the interface with your own company’s look and feel.

Hyier is in an open beta and has not annoucned pricing yet. Its main strength is a focus on recorded videos and removing some of the other features a company may not need anyway.

Kristen Wisdorf, a division manager and recruiter for North Carolina-based University Directories, which hires more than 600 students each year for sales internships, usesInterviewStream to interview job candidates who record their video responses to questions at their convenience. Costs range from around $50 per interview to a flexible annual subscription for unlimited interviews for larger volume clients.

InterviewStream offers an online video practice interviewing system so job seekers can see how they look and sound in an interview and get common fillers such as “um” and “like” out of their vocabularies.

“Scheduling live interviews when we are traveling and attending events around student’s schedules when they are within different time zones can be very challenging,” she says. “[With InterviewStream] students are able to complete the interview whenever they can fit it in their schedule before the deadline.”

University of Nebraska-Lincoln student Annie Wilkinson is one intern University Directories hired using InterviewStream. “It gave me a little bit of time to rehearse my answers. You get three chances, so it just made sure that I could give them the answer I wanted,” she said. “Overall, I thought it was an awesome way to do interviewing.”

Imo.im is a free video chat service used by more than a million people each month who can sign in using their username and passwords from Facebook, Google Talk,Yahoo and other popular sites.

What’s different about it is you can group all your accounts together to get a global view of who’s online and then video chat with a group of people who might be coming from different platforms.

Not only did Ralph Harik co-found Imo.im, which is headquartered in Palo Alto,California, he also uses it to interview and test engineers seeking to work for the company. By opening another window alongside Imo.im and using sites such asietherpad.com or typwith.me, Harik can ask an engineer to solve a programming problem and then sit back and see how he or she does it.

“There are a lot of talented people who wouldn’t have the chance to interview if it wasn’t for video chat,” says Harik, who has hired people from around the world after interviewing them on Imo.

Imo engineer Ahmed Aly says it isn’t unusual for companies to put technical folks through a programming test, but there is a difference when doing it via video.

“For me, the virtual interview was easier because I didn’t need to get a visa or to take a long trip,” he said, although he did experience a trade-off for not having to travel. “In an on-site interview, it’s easier to discuss the problem on a whiteboard because it’s easier to draw pictures with a marker than a mouse to map out the solution before coding.”

Considering the ubiquitous nature of web cams on the average job hunter’s desktop and the slick services popping up that make conducting an interview simple, interviewing via video is sure to become more commonplace for the average SMB.

Remember this, though. Everyone we talked to sealed any employment deal with an in-person meeting.

Note: Gecko Hospitality now offers video interviewing as an “NO CHARGE” option to our clients and candidates. Contact us today to learn more about this wonderful service.

DON’T TYPE YOUR RESUME IN ALL CAPS

…and other things that may stop your resume from making it past the resume gatekeeper

We all know the job market is challenging right now.  The candidate pool is great, the job opening pool is small (but growing!).  Naturally, you want to be sure that your resume is making it into the employer’s database for consideration, right?

Yes, I realize that there are oodles of “Resume Do’s and Don’ts” out there, and I suppose one could call this ‘yet another one.’  I wouldn’t say this one is better or worse than any others…but my spin is a little bit different.  Years ago, in the start of my career…I was the person who decided the fate of nearly every resume that entered our office. I was responsible for processing incoming resumes – mainly, entering them into the database.

I was a resume gatekeeper.  I worked regular business hours Monday through Friday, and when I came in on Monday from being out of the office all weekend, I could literally have 1200 new resumes in my email inbox.  Yes, twelve hundred resumes, give or take.  These resumes came from many places – resumes from our many ad postings (Monster, Careerbuilder, etc), resumes emailed directly by candidates, etc.  I had to process 1200 resumes, and I had to try my best to get through them in that one Monday…or I would be behind for the rest of the week, which never goes over well with bosses.

So, I had about 5 seconds to initially consider every one of those resumes.

In light of all of this…here are some suggestions, from my own former experience as the person who was inundated with resumes, that you might want to consider if you’d like to get your resume past your desired employer’s or recruiting agency’s overwhelmed resume processing person:

• DO NOT COMPOSE YOUR RESUME IN ALL CAPS.
  • It does NOT grab attention in a positive way, it implies that you didn’t realize that the CAPS LOCK was on the entire time. Plus, it’s email/text form of “yelling.” Please don’t “yell” your resume at us.
• ALWAYS include your contact information.  This means name, address, phone number, and email address.
  • Why are you sending me a resume without including a way to contact you?  If you want to be secretive or you’re not interested in being contacted, why are you sending/posting a resume at all? If confidentiality is your concern, mention it! But we won’t contact you if we don’t have a way to do so.
• PLEASE keep the fancy formatting to a minimum!
  • No matter how many squiggly lines and colors you may include in your resume, it still has to make its way into the database – where resumes are often converted to plain text anyway…
  • The crazier your formatting, the higher the likelihood that your resume will not be correctly entered into the database (missing contact info because it was hidden in headers/footers, missing employment dates because they were offset in margins, etc)….which results in a lower likelihood that your resume will not come up using standard database search functions – and if your resume cannot be found, you most likely won’t be in consideration for the positions for which you are applying.
• INCLUDE accurate employment dates!  (Month/Year format is best.)
  • If you decide to omit dates, or list something like “2 years” instead of specific dates, it (1) looks like you’re hiding something, and (2) increases the likelihood that your resume will not be entered correctly into the database (see above).
• INCLUDE statistics and/or accomplishments that set you apart from your peers!  Don’t be afraid to professionally brag about yourself.
  • If you’re a restaurant manager – have you increased sales? (if so, from what % to what %?), have you lowered costs (same thing, give me some rough numbers). How has your store ranked among other stores within your company (in your region, nationwide)? You get the idea.
• ALWAYS be honest and accurate in providing employment information on your resume.
  • It’s always disappointing when we find that we’ve received 3 different versions of a candidate’s resume over time…and the newest versions omit employment that had been listed on previous versions (that we still have on file). This is a big warning sign to us. Dishonesty is never the best option.
  • Plus – at some point, the truth will come out…and it REALLY doesn’t go over very well at background check/employment verification stage if it’s discovered that someone has been lying about his/her employment.
• DON’T LIE about education either!  If you did not complete your degree, do not try to make it appear as if you did. If you have completed some coursework, just say so!
  • This can be checked as well….and no, your twin sister’s Bachelor’s Degree does NOT count for you if you did not complete yours, just because you are twins and you may have attended the same school (Can you believe we’ve once seen someone try to pull this one over on an employer that required a Bachelor’s?)
  • Please keep in mind that not all positions out there have educational requirements.  So why bother fibbing about degree attainment?
• ALWAYS include a subject line when emailing your resume to someone….otherwise, it looks like spam.
  • Any firm that is advertising jobs on the internet is receiving a great deal of spam…if your email comes through as a “no subject” email, your email may be mistaken as spam and may never be viewed.

I know it’s tough out there, especially in a down economy where it’s “a buyer’s market” for employers.  There are many qualified candidates on the market, all vying for the same positions…and unfortunately, not everyone will make the cut.  But, an integral part of even being considered is strategically submitting a well-constructed resume that is clear, concise, has simple but tasteful formatting, and contains honest and accurate information.

Best of luck to you in getting past those overwhelmed resume gatekeepers…..

…but please also remember to be respectful to these vital members of hiring departments and organizations!

By Marty Tarabar

Well, it’s the start of the new year, and you just found out you missed your year end bonus because

1. you had a really bad guest comment sent in to your guest service hot line
2. you missed sales by just under $2,000 which you would have hit if it wasn’t for that snow storm

OR

1. your Ecosure inspection was a high yellow because your kitchen manager forgot to do line temps that day

None of these are reasons to start looking for a new position, but, you should always keep your eyes and ears open for new opportunities. There is so much going on in the industry with companies being bought and sold by capital investment groups, corporations selling off restaurants to franchisees, and major brands shuttering restaurants around the country to try to stay afloat.

Even as some companies are closing restaurants and downsizing there are others who are taking advantage of some great real estate deals and opening new locations. Quick service restaurants are blossoming due to the weakened economy. You can look at the expansion of HuHot Mongolian Grill, Pita Pit, Panera Bread and Garbanzo Mediterranean Grill just to name a few.

On the other end of the scale, there are national companies expanding high end fine dining properties as well. Regional chains are taking advantage of their stake in their markets and are doing better than their national counterparts.

Before you decide to look for a new job, figure out why you are looking and what you are looking for. If it is growth opportunities, look for a company with slow measure expansion, who are in it for the long run. Companies with overly aggressive expansion plans tend to hire more managers than they have locations for and you could end up in a circling pattern waiting for your opportunity.

Do you want a better quality of life (don’t we all)? Make sure companies you are looking at have 3 or 4 person salaried management teams. A restaurant with two managers and 3 or 4 shift managers makes it more difficult for you to have the family time you need.

Job stability? How financially set is the company? Some companies entering into bankruptcy cut managers left and right, close restaurants and reduce corporate staff. Restaurants coming out of bankruptcy usually are much better off and can offer some great possibilities.

Better pay or bonus opportunities? Be careful of the fine print and remember the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. Recruiters can tell you about the amazing bonuses you will be able to make and quote the highest possible bonus. But, there are other things to consider; how much will insurance cost and how good is the coverage, how many weeks of vacation do I get?

So what do you do? How do you find out the best opportunities and when should you start looking?

It is easier to get a new position when you are working. When I present unemployed candidates to corporate recruiters, the first thing they ask is “why aren’t they working? Or What happened at their last job? Even when managers lose their position because of  a store closing, corporate recruiters are leery about someone who has been out of work longer than a week or two. “After all, if they are so good they should have been able to find a job by now.”

The best way to find the information you are looking for is check with the people who know. The partners at Gecko Hospitality talk with corporate recruiters, district managers, directors of operations and company execs everyday.  Give us a call, we are happy to spend time with you, get to know you, and give advice on new opportunities.

Are we Hospitality Recruiters or psychologists?  I stop myself sometimes and wonder about this…..What makes us be successful in our industry?   What sets up apart from the others?   We are taking care of 100’s of companies with their management needs.   We educate the candidates about these jobs, give them choices, see if they are qualified and inform these candidates about the companies; the pros and cons of these positions.  For the client we see what their needs are, what criteria they are looking for in these candidates, and how they would like to set up interviews, etc…  But the more I do this job, the best way I do it is by listening.

I’m listening to the clients about their job needs are and who would be a perfect fit for them.  Also included as a Hospitality Recruiter is listening to the client’s day, about their families, what meetings they have, how they are going to get it all done today for their boss……I believe that  80% of my business is listening to their problems, their days, and how I can help them.   Also on the candidate end, listening is a big key……listening to their background, their problems, their goals, their experience…..I can find out if this candidate is a good match for our companies this way. The clients and candidates also like when I call back and ask them about one of their problems…if they resolved this issue….(you always get a thank you for asking on this one! )

Did you know that over 50% of people are not listeners?  They don’t like to listen!  This opens up many opportunities for the listeners out there! This business is a relationship business and if you are not a listener, you are going to have a tough time.   Your referrals are coming from great relationships with your clients and your candidates.   You are known for being the caring recruiter. One that will find you the right candidate; or for the candidate, he or she calls you because you are the caring recruiter that has many contacts & options for his or her job search…

I can’t tell you how many calls being a Hospitality Recruiter I get that are from referrals.    Some are from referrals from other referrals…….The candidate had a friend that had a friend that you helped and they said to call you for great contacts/ services!    Or I like the client referral….if they can’t help a candidate (that wasn’t mine) , they referral them to me…….that speaks volumes!  Or when your client talks to another company contact he knows and refers you…..that speaks volumes also!    So if you are a great listener, this may be a great job for you!   If you are not the best listener, try it for you week at work and at home……I bet you’ll find it is growing your relationships with the clients, your candidates, and home too!   This will mean success for your business and your home life!    The sky is the limit for great listeners in this great industry we call Restaurant Management Recruiting!

Hiring and stock prices are up, reflecting a measure of economic improvement.
By Sharon Bernstein, Los Angeles Times

October 28, 2010

Advertisement

Are we becoming a nation of hamburger flippers?

While it remains incredibly tough to find a job in almost any field, Restaurant Managers in the restaurant business has been adding workers at a considerable clip.

In September, restaurants and bars in the U.S. added 34,000 jobs. In that same month, the entire private sector added just 64,000 jobs.

“The economy has recovered a little bit and people want to eat out,” said Jack Russo, senior consumer analyst for Edward Jones Investments. That has spurred hiring and prompted enthusiasm on Wall Street, where investors are hungry for any morsel of good news.

Restaurant stocks are soaring.

Shares of McDonalds, for example, are up by a third from this time last year, and some chains are doing even better. The stock prices of the Calabasas Hills-based Cheesecake Factory and the Glendale-based Dinequity, which owns the Applebee’s and IHOP chains, have more than doubled.

For many young people entering the job market in the aftermath of the recession, jobs waiting tables and tending bar are among the few opportunities available.

Peter Osborne, who owns Pete’s Cafe and Pedro’s Cantina in San Francisco, recently hired 35 waiters, bartenders and other workers.

“At 25 years old, a lot of these kids have graduated college,” Osborne said. “They’re taking jobs that you and I might have had while we were in college.”

Restaurant executives say more people are looking upon the field as a career rather than a pit stop on the way to another vocation.

“We are seeing more applicants coming to us not only for the hourly jobs, but for the management programs that we have,” said Mike Mirkil, spokesman for Irvine-based Habit Restaurants Inc., which owns 31 Habit Burger locations. “There are more people now who are really looking at the restaurant industry as a means for a career path.”

Long Beach resident Kiri Meas, 50, didn’t hesitate last month before quitting her job of seven years as manager of a Santa Monica Cinnabon bakery.

“I did not at all worry about finding another job,” she said. “The food industry is all around.”

Within three weeks she’d been scooped up by the Panda Restaurant Group to be general manager of a Panda Express restaurant. She is now one of dozens of new recruits going through training at the firm’s Rosemead headquarters, learning skills as varied as cooking Chinese food and dealing with armed intruders.

Many of the new workers will stay for years, said Gigi Cheung, who heads hiring operations for the 18,000-employee chain.

The attraction of restaurant jobs may have increased in the aftermath of the recession, but it’s part of a long-developing trend. Over the last 20 years, the number of people working at restaurants and bars in the U.S. has increased by about 3 million, according to a Times analysis of data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. Such work accounts for 9% of all private-sector jobs in the U.S., up from 7% in 1990.

One factor fueling the trend is that restaurant work can’t, for the most part, be outsourced. “You can’t serve restaurant meals from Shanghai,” said Edward Leamer, economist and director of the UCLA Anderson Forecast.

But Leamer cautioned that restaurant jobs alone won’t go far toward revitalizing the economy.

“These jobs are good in the short run, but in the long run economic growth cannot be made from you and I trading one meal for another,” he said. Rather, manufacturing or intellectual products such as movies and technical innovation need to come back before the economy can truly heal and grow, Leamer said.

Many restaurant jobs are part time and offer lower pay and fewer benefits than positions in other fields, experts said.

Still, analysts view the most recent spate of hiring as an indication that the economy is beginning to improve. Even though sales at restaurants have essentially been flat this year, according to the NPD Research firm, that’s better than the declines they had suffered through. And the firm predicts that more customers will patronize bars and eateries during the fourth quarter.

Steve West, restaurant industry analyst for Stifel Nicolaus in St. Louis, said the increases in share prices for restaurant firms were driven by large hedge funds and other institutional investors that are betting that the industry will rebound strongly in the coming months.

Even a modest increase in sales can lead restaurants to hire more people, said Hudson Riehle, head of research for the National Restaurant Assn. Unlike other businesses, which might make do with smaller staffs even as the economy improves, restaurants need to hire more people to cook, serve, deliver and clean up when customers start coming back.

Robert Spivak, president of Grill Concepts, a Woodland Hills company that owns the Daily Grill restaurants, said that as customers started spending more in recent months, the firm provided more hours of work for its employees.

“As our sales go up, our scheduling goes up,” he said.

Giacomino Drago, who operates seven restaurants, including Il Pastaio in Beverly Hills, says he has hired between 30 and 40 people in the last year. He didn’t have any trouble finding them.

For some of the openings, he said, as many as 50 people applied.

“It was scary,” Drago said.

sharon.bernstein@latimes.com

Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times

Great information for all Restaurant Managers and really anyone in a supervisory position in any business: http://bit.ly/Leadership11

Have you looked at the job openings on Gecko Hospitality recently?  You should!