Recruiting in a shortage: what still works

The advert has been up for three weeks. It has had four replies: two from people who never turned up to the interview, one from someone who wanted only Tuesday lunchtimes and one from a cook who took the job and then accepted a better offer before their first shift. Meanwhile, the existing team is covering the gaps, working longer weeks and getting more tired, and the next resignation feels like a matter of time.

Recruiting in a shortage is different from recruiting when people are easy to find. The usual methods, an advert and a wait, stop working, and the venues that still find good people do it through other routes: their own team's contacts, people who have worked for them before, shifts that fit people's lives and a willingness to train people who have never worked in a kitchen or on a floor.

This guide covers the methods that still work when labour is short, what each one costs and how to make them work together, with the part that matters most: keeping the people you already have. Every venue and figure in it is an example.

Hospitality staff shortages come from many causes at once: people leaving the industry for jobs with more sociable hours, fewer workers arriving from elsewhere, a busy local market where every venue is hiring, and the long hours, late finishes and modest pay that make the work hard to sustain.

Some of these a single venue cannot change. But a venue can change how it looks to the people it wants to hire, how easy it is to join and how long people want to stay, and in a shortage those are what decide who finds staff and who does not.

The methods that still work in a shortage have something in common: they reach people through trust rather than adverts. Referrals from the existing team, former staff who left on good terms, people who know the venue as guests, and local people who would never have looked at a hospitality job board.

They also make the job easier to say yes to: shifts that fit around other commitments, clear pay, training for people with no experience and a quick, respectful hiring process. Each lowers the barrier for someone who is unsure.

Referrals, people recommended by the existing team, are often the best source of new staff in a shortage. A server who recommends a friend knows the job and the friend, and is unlikely to recommend someone who would let them down. Employee referral schemes are common in many industries for that reason.

Ask the team directly and regularly: do you know anyone who might want to work here? Many good hires come from a friend of a friend who would never have seen the advert.

Many venues pay a referral bonus, paid in two parts: some when the new starter joins and the rest when they have stayed a few months. Splitting it encourages referrals of people who will stay rather than anyone who will apply.

Set the bonus against the cost of the alternative. An agency fee or months of advertising often cost far more than a generous referral bonus, and the referred hire is usually better.

Former staff who left on good terms are another strong source. They know the venue, the menu and the team, and they need far less training. Some left for reasons that no longer apply: a course that has finished, a move that did not work out, a job elsewhere that was not what they hoped.

Keep in touch, respectfully. A short message when a role opens, to people who left well, often brings a reply, and sometimes brings someone back who becomes one of the venue's most loyal staff.

Former staff only come back if they left well. A warm goodbye, a fair final pay, a good reference and an open door make it easy for someone to return later; a bitter departure closes that door for good.

Treat every leaver as a possible future colleague and a possible referrer. People talk about how they were treated when they left, and in a shortage, that reputation matters.

Flexible shifts open the job to people who cannot work a full rota: students, parents, people with second jobs or caring responsibilities. A lunch shift that ends before the school run, a regular weekend shift for a student, a short evening shift for someone with a day job.

Flexible shifts take more work to build into the rota, but they widen the pool of people who can say yes. In a shortage, a team made partly of part-timers is far better than a team short of people.

Students are a traditional source of hospitality staff, and for good reason: they often want evening and weekend work, learn quickly and bring energy to a team. The challenge is the calendar: exams, holidays and the end of the academic year.

Plan for it. Hire students knowing when they will be away, overlap new starters with leavers before the summer and keep in touch with students who go home for the holidays, who may want their shifts back when they return.

Parents who need work that fits around school hours are often overlooked by hospitality, because the busiest hours are evenings and weekends. But many venues have daytime needs: lunch service, prep, morning cleaning, deliveries.

A role built around school hours, such as a lunch server or a morning prep cook, can attract experienced, reliable people who simply cannot work evenings. Say so clearly in the advert, because these candidates will not apply for a job that looks like it needs every evening.

Older workers and people changing careers bring experience of work, reliability and often a calm that busy services need. Some have worked in hospitality before; others bring skills from retail, care or customer service that transfer well.

Make the advert welcoming to them. A job description that talks about the work rather than a "young, dynamic team" is more likely to reach them, and many will stay longer than younger staff building their careers elsewhere.

People returning to work after a break, to raise children, care for a relative or recover from illness, are often overlooked. Many have worked in hospitality before and simply need a way back in: a few shifts a week, some patience in the first weeks and a manager who understands.

Say in the advert that returners are welcome, and offer a gentle start. A returner who is given time to find their feet often becomes one of the steadiest members of the team.

Catering colleges and hospitality courses train people who want to work in the industry. Building a relationship with a local college, offering work placements or taking on apprentices gives the venue a steady supply of keen beginners and a chance to see them work before hiring them.

Apprenticeships take time and supervision, but they produce staff trained in the venue's own way, who often stay longer because the venue invested in them.

In a shortage, training people with no hospitality experience is often the most reliable route. Someone friendly, reliable and willing to learn can be taught to serve, to run food or to prep in a few weeks; the qualities that make a good team member are much harder to teach.

It needs a real plan. A training checklist for the first weeks, a patient trainer and reasonable first shifts turn a willing beginner into a capable colleague. Our guide to a training checklist for the first four weeks covers what to put in it.

Training costs time: the trainer's time, the new starter's slower first weeks and the mistakes that come with learning. A rough sum of those costs, set against an agency fee or months of empty shifts, usually shows that training is the cheaper route.

It also produces staff who learned the venue's way of doing things from the start. Our guide to staff training that fits around service covers how to train without closing the doors.

Pay rates matter more in a shortage, because candidates can compare. A venue paying below the local going rate will struggle however good its other offers are. Find out what similar venues nearby pay, and be honest with yourself about where you stand.

State the pay clearly in every advert. Candidates in a shortage have choices, and many will not apply to a job that hides its pay behind "competitive".

Pay is not the only thing people weigh. Fair rotas published well in advance, guaranteed hours, proper breaks, staff meals, clear tip sharing, training and a team people enjoy working with all count, and some of them cost little.

Mention them in the advert, specifically. "Rotas published two weeks ahead" and "a staff meal before every shift" are more convincing than "great benefits".

In a shortage, the job description has to work harder. It needs to tell candidates exactly what the job involves, the shifts, the pace, the pay, and why this venue is a better place to work than the one down the road.

Our guide to job descriptions that describe the actual job covers how to write one that attracts the right people and turns away those who would leave.

In a shortage, good candidates are hired quickly, often by whoever replies first. A venue that takes a week to answer an application, another week to interview and another to decide will lose most of its best candidates to faster venues.

Reply within a day, interview within a few days and decide quickly. A short paid trial shift can replace a long interview process and shows both sides far more.

Keep the interview short and practical. Talk through the job, the shifts and the pay; ask about their experience and what they are looking for; show them the venue and introduce them to the team.

In a shortage, the interview is as much about the candidate choosing you as you choosing them. Be welcoming, be honest about the job and make it clear what happens next and when.

In some places, venues can employ workers from abroad, sometimes by sponsoring their visas. The rules vary widely, involve costs and obligations and change often, so take proper advice before relying on it.

Where it is possible, it can fill roles that are hard to recruit locally, especially in kitchens. But it works best as part of a wider plan, alongside training local people and keeping the team you have.

Local people are often the most reliable staff, because they live nearby, know the area and are less likely to move away. Reach them through the venue itself: a sign in the window, a note on the menu, a word with regular guests and local community groups.

Guests are an underused source. A regular who loves the venue may have a son or daughter looking for work, or may be looking for a few shifts themselves.

Recruitment agencies and temporary staff agencies can fill urgent gaps, but they cost a great deal, either as a placement fee or a higher hourly rate. Agency staff also do not know the venue, which affects service.

Use agencies for genuine emergencies, not as the recruitment plan. Every month spent relying on agency staff is a month's budget that could have funded a referral bonus or a trainer's time.

The venue's own channels, its website, its social media and its email to guests, reach people who already like the venue. A post about the team, or a short note that the venue is hiring, often reaches people a job board would not.

Show what it is like to work there: the team at a staff meal, a chef teaching a new cook, a server who started as a beginner and is now a supervisor. People join teams, not adverts.

In a shortage, staff culture becomes a recruitment tool. Hospitality workers talk to each other, and a venue known for fair rotas, respectful managers and a good team finds people more easily than one known for the opposite.

Our guide to staff culture is built on the rota, not posters covers the everyday decisions that build that reputation.

The cheapest recruitment of all is not losing people in the first place. Every member of staff who stays is one fewer vacancy to fill, one fewer new starter to train and one more experienced person on the team.

In a shortage, staff retention deserves at least as much attention as recruitment. Our guide to staff retention: the four reasons people leave covers the most common causes and what to do about them.

Sometimes, despite everything, the team is too small for the venue's hours. Running every service short-staffed burns out the people you have and lowers the standard for guests.

In that case, consider closing a quiet service, shortening the menu or reducing the number of covers for a while. It is a hard decision, but a smaller operation run well is better than a larger one run badly, and it protects the team while recruitment catches up.

Every method in this guide works better when the people hired stay. A shortage is the worst time to hire someone who leaves after three weeks, because the effort of finding them is so great.

Our guide to hiring restaurant staff who stay past August covers the whole process, from the advert to the first months.

Keep a simple record of where each new hire came from, whether a referral, a former member of staff, an advert, an agency or a walk-in, and how long they stayed. After a year, the record shows which sources bring people who stay.

Spend more effort on the sources that work. A venue that finds most of its long-serving staff through referrals should invest in referrals; one that loses most agency hires within weeks should rely on agencies less.

An invented bistro cannot fill two server roles after a month of advertising. The manager offers the team a referral bonus, half on joining and half after three months, messages four former staff who left on good terms, creates a lunch-only role for school hours and decides to train people without experience using a four-week checklist.

Within a month, a server's friend joins through a referral, a former cook returns for weekend shifts and a parent with retail experience takes the lunch role and proves to be one of the best servers the bistro has had. The agency the bistro had been using for weekend cover is no longer needed.

servearound does not advertise jobs, keep a list of applicants or run interviews, so the recruiting in this guide happens outside it. It helps once someone says yes. A new starter is invited by email with their role and the venues they will work in, the invitation shows how long it has left before it expires, and they sign in on shared screens with their own name and PIN.

Their role shows only the parts of the app their job needs, which makes training people without experience quicker to start: a new server can take orders on the till on their first shift without being able to change the menus, read the reports or open the settings, and each venue's team chat helps them find the messages that matter to their shifts. To talk about setting up a new team, get in touch, and if you would like to work on the tools themselves, our careers page lists our open roles.

Referrals, former staff, flexible shifts and training people without experience, usually together.

Often, yes, split between joining and staying a few months.

Yes, if they are reliable and willing, and you have a real training plan.

Within a day, with an interview within a few days.

Yes. In a shortage, candidates compare, and hidden pay puts them off.

For emergencies, but they cost far more than building your own pipeline.

Keeping them is the cheapest recruitment there is.

When the team is too small to run every service well, while recruitment catches up.

Recruiting in a shortage means reaching people through trust rather than adverts: referrals from the team, rewarded when the new starter stays; former staff who left well; local people and guests; and candidates the usual advert misses, such as students, parents and career changers, offered flexible shifts that fit their lives. Training people without experience, with a real plan, is often the most reliable route of all.

State fair pay rates clearly, hire quickly, use agencies only in emergencies and let the venue's staff culture do some of the recruiting. Above all, protect staff retention, because every person who stays is a vacancy that never opens, and hiring restaurant staff who stay is what ends a shortage for good.