How to Write Stellar Restaurant Job Descriptions for Your Hiring Ads

It is generally agreed that, in business, your people are your greatest resource.

Unfortunately, employee retention in the hospitality industry is an ongoing issue. Turnover rates have been on the rise for years, reaching an all-time high of 72.1 percent in 2015. Of this group, food service workers reported the lowest tenure rate, staying on with a job for an average of only 1.9 years. For restaurant managers, this translates to a constant pressure to source and hire new staff, a process that is further complicated by tight timeframes and, in some cases, the absence of streamlined hiring protocols.

So how can restaurant job descriptions protect your restaurant from becoming a revolving door?

Writing Exceptional Restaurant Job Descriptions

The trick is to write the right restaurant job posting. When restaurant job descriptions are well-written, the postings attract the right people, and the right people are more likely to identify with your brand, feel happier at work, and stay part of your team longer.

Recommended Reading: Using Employee Training to Avoid Turnover

Before you sit down to draft your next posting, here is what you need to know:

1. Know Your Audience

Want to attract top talent? First you’ll need to identify what skills and traits your ideal employee will possess. For example, tech literacy is quickly moving from a “nice to have” to a “must have” in the restaurant world. Nowadays, everything from employee scheduling apps to point-of-sale systems and even menus are digitized.

Once you’ve pulled together a shortlist, your next step is to write a job description in a way that not only highlights these requirements, but resonates with your future staff superstars. Try speaking directly to your applicants using plain English and “you” statements. This will help applicants visualize themselves in the role and develop trust in your brand.

2. Share Your Values Early And Often

50% of millennials say they’d take a pay cut for a job that aligned with their values. It’s no surprise, then, that values-based job postings are becoming increasingly popular. Is your restaurant big on community? Trust? Sustainability? Say so! While your job posting may not be applicants’ first interaction with your brand—they might follow you on social media or frequent your establishment—how you describe and position your company will set the tone for what can be expected should they make it past an interview.

Recommended Reading: Hire the Right People for Your Restaurant

3. Bend The Rules, Don’t Break Them

A typical job advertisement consists of five sections:

1. Company information (Who you are)
2. Job description (What they’ll do)
3. Job requirements (What they’ll need)
4. Job benefits (What they’ll gain)
5. Contact details (How to apply)

That’s not to say you can’t get a bit (or a lot) creative with an outside-the-box recruitment campaign, so long as you back it up with a clearly-defined list of responsibilities. With countless restaurant job descriptions out there, a bit of creative flair can really help you stand out from the crowd—especially when you consider the average applicant spends less than a minute evaluating a job posting.