What Can A Restaurant Maître d Teach Us About Candidate Experience?

Employer brand is the secret weapon that can fill in the gaps in candidate experience

While researching for my book, I spoke with Shane Gray, a good friend and well-known influencer in the recruitment technology space. He said something that has stayed with me for a long time: “Someone once asked me, what is the best possible candidate experience a person can have? My answer, not applying for the job you have no chance of getting.”

Ninety-nine percent of the time, recruitment is in the rejection business, an appalling waste of time and money with significant human cost on both sides of the process. 
 

One of the most impactful ways to improve this situation is to use your employer brand and help more people self-select out of the process before they apply. 

Employer brand delivered at the right place at the right time is the secret weapon that can fill in the gaps for a candidate and engage the right people. This is the premise of my book, Give & Get Employer Branding –  to repel the many to compel the few.

However, what if your employer branding is not the smart filter you dream it could be? What if your employer branding is still focused on simply attracting as many people towards your brand as possible? You may be overwhelming your recruiters and negatively impacting your brand reputation as your candidate experience takes a nosedive. Does that sound familiar?

As employer brand leaders are celebrating the surge in popularity, talent attraction leaders are simultaneously submitting requests for extra technology to deal with the very real business problem of too many applications. 

How Would Your Average Restaurant Maître d Handle This Particular Problem?

Imagine for a minute that you’re a new popular restaurant, freshly launched in a thriving community. Word has spread, so everyone wants to eat there on your first upcoming Friday and Saturday night. You’re the talk of the town because the food is rumored to be excellent, well-priced and the service is said to be outstanding too. 

Friday night rolls around and with 30 minutes to go before the doors open, people are starting to queue outside and orders from Uber Eats start to arrive. There’s a buzz in the air – it’s going to be a busy night.

You have 30 tables, 2 chefs, 2 waitstaff and 1 person serving drinks at the bar.

The kitchen team has been prepping food all morning, the waitstaff has learned the menu, and the team is primed and ready, excited and proud.

As soon as the restaurant doors are unlocked, the waitstaff invites people to take their seats and begins taking orders for dinner. The soft music sets the scene perfectly and the waitstaff attentively suggests and recommends items on the menu according to the taste and preferences of patrons. Even ordering the food is a delightful experience.

As the first orders emerge from the kitchen, the food is met with anticipation and delight – the promise of a memorable culinary experience is being delivered with a smile.

However, very quickly, every table is full. People are still waiting outside. Uber Eats orders continue to pour in. The waitstaff team hurries to take orders, hopping from table to table to take care of the growing crowd.

The kitchen begins to struggle – a stream of orders has turned into a flood; and the orders keep mounting up.

As just a few people finish their meals and leave, more people are ushered in and their orders are taken frantically, despite people around them still waiting for their food ordered over an hour ago.

Patrons are visibly fatigued waiting for food and some even leave without eating. Complaints start to surface and still empty tables are quickly filled by people waiting outside.

OK, that’s enough of that; it’s cringingly painful to write, never mind read. I bet you can recall a similar restaurant experience yourself, and I also bet you never went back there.

Now, let’s add our ‘maître d in shining armour’. What would they do to fix this problem?

Popularity is not a bad thing by any means; however, this should be quickly turned into an advantage, rather than a plague of destruction and disaster as illustrated above. 

To protect the reputation, the proposition needs to be addressed and the experience needs to be controlled. Popularity is quickly turned into focused exclusivity.

1. Clearly determine both sides of the proposition. 
A pleasant evening in a beautiful restaurant is made better by a shared appreciation for the experience. The barriers for entry are designed to increase and maintain desire while offering efficiency internally too. In a restaurant this is done by increasing prices, limiting the menu, introducing a dress code and/or insisting on a pre-booking system. 

In recruitment, this could mean being much more specific with the required capabilities, experience and application process. They don’t want just any diner, you want the ones who will enjoy the meal, pay the bill and leave a great tip.

2. Control ‘supply’ by limiting ‘demand’
You know it’s a great restaurant if it’s difficult to get a table. Being made to wait isn’t a bad thing, however, it’s positive when you finally successfully book a reservation. 

Have you ever heard of a waiting list for a role in recruitment? A maître d wouldn’t think twice about controlling the flow of applicants to ensure a quality service. What’s more, a good maître d knows that patrons left waiting, exposed to poor service are a risk to the brand reputation. And, by limiting the number of bookings depending on the number of ‘tables you can serve’ at any one time becomes a ‘no-brainer’.

3. Exceed expectations 
A candidate experience is a brand experience, just like any other. If you can meet expectations, you can exceed them. If your recruitment team and hiring managers are not overrun with too many candidates, you have an opportunity to expose people to the magic of your brand. Every candidate you meet is a potential brand ambassador clambering to tell their community about their experience within your organization, however brief. 

What would a maître d do to achieve this in a restaurant? How about a tour of the garden from which the food is grown or a walk through the wine cellar? How about an unexpected entrée, a free drink or a personal note that relates to the reason you booked the table? 

These details make dining out an event to be talked about and never forgotten. However, just making the time and space to be served well and looked after properly goes a long way to achieving a similar reaction.

When we design candidate experiences for our clients, we have to be realistic with what’s possible from a logistical perspective. However, exceeding expectations does not mean continually going above and beyond, it simply means designing an experience such that you get the desired elevated reaction and outcomes you want for your brand reputation to flourish, every time by controlling that experience by design.

Quantity is, in most cases the enemy of quality. Rather than invest in technology to serve more candidates, I suggest creating a more robust experience that is worthy of being scaled up first. When technology is introduced, it can be used to automate inefficiency, add to a positive brand experience intelligently and accentuate the memorable moments of magic you have already created to exceed expectations. 

I suppose Shane Gray and our fictional maître d would both encourage you to choose quality of quantity, even being disciplined enough to turn people away if you can’t live up to the candidate experience your brand reputation and candidates deserve.

Bryan Adams, author of GIVE & GET EMPLOYER BRANDING: Repel The Many And Compel The Few With Impact, Purpose, and Belonging, is CEO and Founder of Ph.Creative. He is recognized as one of the leading employer brand agencies in the world.  Visit www.giveandget.net Connect Bryan Adams