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Hospitality Manager Job – Survive vs Well Paid

If you want to be a hospitality manager then you need to take off the rose-colored glasses and take a hard look at the job- not as a worker sees it, but as the owners and investors see it.

Financial Planning

There is a reason why a financial manager can earn a median of $117,000 and can earn as much as $200,000. Success and failure are all measured in the balance sheet. The better financial managers can handle money, the more they make.

This is true for any hospitality manager, too. It doesn’t matter whether your job description asks for someone who can run the day-to-day operations or human resources. The difference between a low paid hospitality manager and a high paid hospitality manager is their ability to manage the money.

Many restaurant managers mistakenly believe that profit and loss is the general manager’s job. If you are in management, it is your job to run your department in a productive manner.

Hiring Process

Firstly, career development starts long before it is time to look for your next job. It begins by learning to measure your current successes, and focusing on what you accomplish in your current job. If you ask me to define the difference between a resume I turn down for a mid level job, and landing a 5 figure job then I answer simply:

Resume #1

  • Project management
  • Managed day to day restaurant duties
  • Team Management and coaching

Resume #2

  • Managed 5 projects lowering expenses .085% and increasing profits 2.31%
  • Daily Management: Decreased purchase expenses 12.8% Decreased electricity expense 8.11%
  • Staff management: Implemented new employee protocols 18.1% in first year employees, reducing hiring budget 3%

Which resume speaks to you? Of course, when the second Candidate attends the job interview I want to see a portfolio that highlights how they accomplished this. I may not wish to discuss the fact further, as long as I see the portfolio.

Personnel Management

No matter how good you are as a financial planner, if you cannot get people ‘onboard’ then it doesn’t matter how great your plans are. A hospitality manager needs to be able to sell their plans to everyone from the investor to the kitchen staff.

In today’s market, hiring managers want to see viable life coaching skills, preferably from a certifying association. This is not one area where you can take the weekend course. An interviewer will probably not ask about coaching skills. Everything you say, write, and your body language will reveal your proficiency in coaching and motivational skills.

Graphic Art

Communication is important in all aspects. A report is 50% communication, 50% the effective use of graphics. In my experience, one of the biggest time leeches in a hospitality management office is trying to make word processors create a ‘hodgepodge’ of graphics. The more complex reports need to be, the more time is lost creating strong visual messages.

Small restaurants require the advertising to be done by the management staff. A good graphic artist with a background in marketing is able to create advertisements that work.

While graphic art is overlooked by most managers as a viable skill, it can make the difference between landing a mid-level job, and a higher hospitality manager job.

 

 

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