The brain drain is a big problem during the development of hospitality, to appeal to the highest calibre staff, there are five important steps to consider.

　　1. Set up a separate careers site for your hotel. Having your own site away from your main website means you can be actively attracting the right talent continuously. It also means that you can own your recruitment drive and not rely on expensive recruitment agents to match you with suitable candidates. Your careers site should be purely dedicated to attracting the best talent by talking about the culture, your values and addressing the needs and aspirations of prospective employees. Use a tool like Workable to manage your recruitment pipeline and keep good CVs on file.

　　2. Be proactive. Don’t wait for talented people to come to you. Great people don’t hang around and will get snapped up by your competition. Instead, create opportunities to engage with the best talent. This might be letting them know that they are on your radar, meeting them for a coffee to find out about their future plans, or actually creating a role for them in your hotel. Simply waiting for vacancies to arise by attrition or growth could mean the perfect candidate passes you by.

　　3. Sell your culture. Don’t hide your biggest recruitment tool behind closed doors. Use your culture and your existing staff to demonstrate what it’s like to work at your hotel. Sell the story with ‘behind the scenes’ photos of team days and general daily goings on. Share things that reflect the culture such as videos of staff talking passionately about what it’s like to be part of the team. This will really connect with potential talent and attract the type of staff that will fit in and share your values.

　　4. Champion and celebrate your loyal staff. The recruitment door in hospitality is always revolving, so it’s particularly important to reward long-term staff and make a fuss of them. Let them be your advocates for future talent by giving them a chance to talk about their commitment to the hotel and what they have achieved there.

　　5. Lastly, be active on social sites. Young and savvy talented people will do their homework on you so use this as a chance to showcase the passion, fun, and enthusiasm of your team. Embrace social media as part of your culture and encourage your team to help build your hotel’s profile by sharing their stories.