Unless you’ve been living under a rock the past 6 months, I don’t need to tell you how much of an impact COVID-19 has had on the industry but what does that mean for recruitment?
Well before all this happened the Leisure and Hospitality industry was increasing 3 times faster than the rest of the labour force and employed 9% of the workforce across the world making it one of the largest industries. This all changed when the job market plummeted in March to May and is now slowly on the rise with Chefs and Wait staff seeing a 4-5% increase in job postings between the weeks beginning 7 September and 14 September according to the REC, however this may decline within Contract Catering due to the governments change of view from sending people back to the office, to now asking them to remain at home.
With recruitment slowly on the rise but new restrictions coming into play and the end of Furlough the way companies recruit moving forward is going to look very different.
So, what does that mean for you?
- A need to learn new IT skills for some – All applications made online
- More applications per job – How do I stand out?
- Video interviewing instead of Face to Face – What to expect
Some of that may sound scary so, how do you prepare for this new world?
Well there are loads of free resources that will help with upskilling on IT, cover letter and CV writing, interview prep, check out our resources page for further details: https://foodservicecircle.com/training/
You need to treat looking for a job as a job in itself, get yourself up ready for the working day as you would normally. Create a spreadsheet with all the jobs you’re applying for, the worst thing you can say to a recruiter is what job is that again, I’ve applied for so many! Click and apply for is great when there are loads of jobs to apply for but how many of you have heard back when you’ve done that? Not many I’m guessing because you didn’t do anything to stand out from the crowd!
With more applications against each job, how do you stand out from the crowd? A strong cover letter on why you fit the role, use some of the wording from their advert, video CV’s (Yes Video!) for the more confident job seeker. Most people won’t want to hear this but in reality, with there being few jobs out there you may need to look further afield which is where you really need to focus on your transferable skills and match them to the key words in the advert.
Video Interviewing is great and was slow coming in Pre-COVID so we should really embrace this as it’s here to stay! Some great benefits of it are no paying for travel, no having to worry about being late and having to sort out childcare, you attend your interview from the comfort of your own home. Now just because you’re at home doesn’t mean that you don’t need to put in the same effort! You still need to dress to impress, research the company, prepare questions to ask and most of all practise answering general interview questions, you can find some interview tips here: https://foodservicecircle.com/interview-prep/
So in short, recruitment has very much moved online and to keep up with the changes you’ll need to prepare to alter the way you normally go about finding a new job as the changes are here to stay!