These two articles, written by Tony Eldred, first appeared in Inside Dining magazine several years ago.

On recruiting the ultimate front-of-house staff

How we became involved with job aptitude testing . . .

On recruiting the ultimate front-of-house staff

I have always believed that the recruitment of staff is the most important of all the tasks in a manager’s routine. My logic is simple -- as your business grows, you can’t do it all yourself; you need competent people around you who can translate your vision into action. If you hire badly you create a rod for your own back.

Imagine you need a waiter. You might put the word around or place an ad in the paper. If the response is good you might conduct interviews and discard the obvious duds. Imagine you end-up with a couple of good prospects -- both are presentable, outgoing, eager and have relevant experience. You check their references and they both get good recommendations. Sound good so far? If everything seems OK you’d possibly choose one or the other on ‘gut’ feeling.

As it turns out, our hypothetical waiters had one essential difference, and you may have missed it. The first applicant loved being of service and really relished the challenge of selling. You could leave him totally alone and he would do well because he enjoyed the role. He was a ‘natural’.

The second applicant was also outgoing and presented himself well in the interviews, because he desperately needed income -- but deep down he hated selling and thought it was immoral and beneath him. He would act the part when you were watching, but he would revert to his natural passive behaviour when out of view or unsupervised. The customer average for both waiters could be as much as $20 per person different.

The problem we had to face is that in an interview, both waiters would try to sell themselves in order to get a job, and it is difficult to tell the real from the fake. As far as reference checks go, they are of great value if the person giving the reference shares the same values as you, but I'd love $100 for every time a dud staff member has been given a good reference by some turkey.

As our industry develops, recruitment is becoming more difficult. Almost anybody who is desperate for a job can act enough to fool an inexperienced or untrained interviewer. Even highly skilled personnel specialists have difficulties. This is why we began to use job aptitude tests -- we needed a better way for our clients to sort the grain from the chaff.

As part of the process of working out what kind of people made the best waiting staff, we aptitude tested the best floor staff from a number of restaurants to establish what attributes they possessed. The results were quite a surprise. Most of the waiters turned out to be introverted, except a few who we’ll come back to. This took me completely off guard as I always assumed good service staff had to be outgoing in nature. I had worked on that assumption for 20 years.

When we watched them work, the test results began to make sense. The introverted waiters handled the flow of food and beverage to the tables. They were reasonably warm and friendly to the customers but did not waste time in idle chatter. Their food running productivity was excellent but they sold using rehearsed patter.

The others were extroverts. They had naturally slotted into an almost a pure sales role within the teams. They were charming, charismatic and affable, and had a love of selling. In the early part of service they circulated selling beverages while the others handled the flow of food. After main course they moved about the tables realising high margin add-on sales opportunities. Their average sales were quite impressive.

As a result of this testing, I learned that a good front of house team consists of a balance of two thirds introverts and one third extroverts. If you stock your dining area exclusively with extroverts you will get good sales results but the movement of product will be so slow, you’ll need twice as many of them. They will tend to stand around and talk too much. If you have all introverts you will move food and beverage quickly but you’ll have a poor sales and your customers’ perception of your service will not be as good as it could be.

Our use of these aptitude tests came about as an extension of a learning curve into more effective recruitment techniques. Like a lot of managers, our clients had previously relied on their intuition and often accepted job applicants who were partially unsuited to the expected role. Unsuitable staff can be a real problem. Quite often they’re not bad enough to give you clear justification for termination, but their lacklustre performance can be a constant source of irritation, and worse still, they can drag down the morale and standards of the rest of your team.

I’m still disturbed at how often I encounter staff in various hospitality businesses who are not only unsuitable, but totally wrong for their jobs. They’re usually the result of what I call ‘body snatching’. Body snatchers are managers who are too lazy to spend time recruiting properly. You can always tell one when you meet them -- they have ulcers, grey hair, dark rings around their eyes and they will always tell you how many hours they have worked last week, and how tough business is.

The more experienced I become, the more I respect proper recruitment. Small differences in peoples' make-up can have a profound influence on work performance, stability and job satisfaction. Get your people right and they’ll get your business right.

How we became involved with job aptitude testing . . .

Two months ago I wrote an article for this magazine about the use of psychological testing in hospitality recruitment and staff management. The interest this article generated was quite a surprise. I received a number of phone calls and letters on the subject, and it is obvious that I have struck a chord somewhere, so I have decided to write more on the subject . . .

The psychological test we use is called a Personality Profile. I first encountered it about 15 years ago when I was an Area Manager for Kentucky Fried Chicken Pty. Ltd. The company used the original version of the test as a screening tool for the recruitment of Assistant Store Managers. We had a very specific target for the type of person we were looking for and we had found that the interview process, while reasonably successful, was not yielding the result we wanted.

The company introduced these tests and briefed all the senior managers on their use. My colleagues and I were very cynical -­ how could a simple, written test possibly give an accurate assessment of a person's intelligence, personality, decisiveness and honesty? It seemed to be too good to be true. We expressed our misgivings to our boss, who revealed that he also felt the same.

We decided to perform a very unscientific investigation of our own to see if the test was accurate. We all sat the test ourselves, then applied it to our longest serving managers. Before the results were revealed we were asked to rate ourselves and our managers according to the test criteria -­ the logic being to compare our own subjective assessments with the objective assessments produced by the test.

I found the results amazing. First, I remember reading my own report with an interesting mixture of excitement and horror. Here, on paper, was a disturbingly accurate picture of the real me ­- the one I don't show to many people. My family and close friends confirmed the descriptions of my personality and lauded the accuracy of the report comments.

The results of my manager's tests were similar. I felt I new them all fairly well and the tests confirmed most of my assumptions. They were each given their results and not one of them disputed the accuracy of what they read, although some of them were disappointed that their weaknesses were revealed `in public'. This wasn't a bad thing, as it subsequently forced some of them to face reality and modify their behaviour for the better.

We then went on to use the test as a general aid to management selection and I came to value it and trust it. One of its most useful features was its inbuilt honesty checking. If you tried to fool the test, or manipulate it's results, it invalidated itself and told you to disregard the results.

About six years ago I was looking for a tool to help us to recruit senior staff for our clients and I wondered if a test like this was still available. The recession was beginning to unfold and the job market was becoming flooded with the jetsam and flotsam of business failure. There were good people out there, but how do you tell them from among a majority of dubious performers?

We made inquiries, and to my delight I found that the Personality Profile was still available. It had been developed much further in the last ten years as more research and test validation data had become available. The old test had been manually scored and required specially trained personnel to produce the results. In the new version, the results are entered onto a computer and the reports are automatically produced. I made arrangements to purchase a batch from the U.S..

The first thing I did when I received the computer disk and test booklets was to sit down and do the test again. I had almost no recall of the test itself and simply did the whole thing anew. I was curious -­ had I changed over the years? How? The results, once again were a surprise. They were exactly the same as they were 15 years ago. I still have the original test on file. I have to conclude that peoples' personalities don't change too much over the years, but their behaviour patterns do change with experience.

After using the test for two years in a variety of business situations, my respect for it's usefulness has been fully re-established. It can be applied in a variety of ways. It's value in recruitment is obvious, and we use it for that purpose as a matter of course. We also test the owners of businesses we work with on management projects, so that we can allocate specific training to accelerate their personal development. In larger businesses, we use it to plan the training of personnel we have identified for development as part of a management succession plan.

Through examining the testing we have done so far, we have learned a great deal. For instance, our normal indicator of intelligence -- verbal fluency -­ is very misleading. We have had a number of examples of people who impress in an interview, but who fail miserably in mental aptitude performance tests. The results indicate that a person can be quite verbally agile but unable to apply lateral thinking or clear logic to a problem.

We have also found that there is a clear link between intelligence and flexibility. Slow learners resist change because it takes them so long to assimilate. The smarter a person is the more flexible they appear to be. This has interesting connotations if you are trying to run a business in a rapidly changing social environment, and we have seen many businesses fail due to the mental rigidity of their owners and senior staff.

In all, we have found that the development and reliability of this type of aptitude testing has created a very valuable tool that I wish more of this industry would recognise and use. It is ideal for business owners who are seeking an edge over their competition and wish to strengthen the people side of their business.

© Eldred Hospitality Pty Ltd, 2008