Owning a wedding venue has a lot of advantages, but you can only reap the benefits if you have a highly qualified and talented staff. Most wedding venues have fairly small behind the scenes operations, so you likely don’t have a dedicated HR department or talent recruitment service to handle your hiring. That means that not only will you need to find great applicants for your wedding venue staff, but you’ll also need to interview and ultimately hire them as well. Since hiring and firing aren’t things that most people are used to, here’s what you need to know to get highly qualified people to staff your wedding venue.
Experience Matters
Since a wedding venue is ultimately a hospitality business similar to a restaurant or hotel, having experience in customer service should be one of the chief factors that you consider when hiring a prospective employee. Whether they were a server at a chain restaurant or worked the front counter of a local supermarket, the ability to handle people one-on-one is a crucial part of being a good fit at a wedding venue.
Observe Their Attitude
Along with experience, attitude goes a long way in the hospitality industry. You need every employee at your wedding venue to have a polite face regardless of what they are handling at any given time, and that could be a drunken wedding guests or a bride that is crying her eyes out. If a person is easily agitated or seems to get annoyed, they are not a good face for your business and you should hire someone else.
Check Their References
Nearly every employment application includes an area to cite job references, but you’d be surprised how many interviewers skip validating them all together. Since so few people actually check references, it has become a common place for people seeking employment to embellish and lie. By simply calling each reference on an application, you can get a feel for who the person you are hiring is and what types of people they value the opinion of. References are about more than just hearing nice things about your employee; they’re about discovering who is willing to vouch for that person and what their status is as well.
Background Check
Lastly, you need to make sure you do a background check on every single applicant that justifies serious consideration. People travel from all over to attend weddings, so having a criminal in your employ can be a lot of trouble. Imagine hiring a thief and having to deal with an entire wedding’s purses being stolen from coat check; not to mention people who are potentially violent. Do yourself and your customers a favor; thoroughly check your employee’s backgrounds through a reputable service.
Hiring employees is a tricky task, and only you can know for sure which qualities you’re seeking from the applicants. However, without the aid of a dedicated HR department, you can make sure that you’re dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s by following the simple formula above to validate your employee’s application, qualifications, and background.
About the Author
Claire Davies is a former wedding planner turned blogger who contributes to several well-known publications across the internet. Her primary work can be seen on the Wedding Day Sparklers website where she manages the blog offering wedding advice and tips to those who are in need. If you would like here to write about a specific topic, you can contact her that that site.
