Hiring on ice

What is the most difficult F&B role to fill and why?

Jegat-Deniau: Assistant F&B manager or F&B manager, as the employee needs to be qualified and able to manage operations smoothly in a period where we have a shortage of staff.

Cucos: Sometimes it's challenging to get the right candidate, the right skilled chef, for a certain type of cuisine; someone who can create food to very high expectations.

Ephraim: At this point in time, we don't really find any role too difficult to fill. We believe whenever we have a new opportunity we should recruit internally and as a group of hotels we have a big pool of staff to draw from; people who have been with the company quite a while, climbing the ladder. So when we do need to recruit it is only for entry-level positions.

Tieken: We have found it very difficult to find chefs with specific skill-sets in this region. For instance, Japanese chefs who can make sushi, sashimi, robata - they are still hard to find.

The good ones get paid really good money in Japan so they don't want to leave, and others are so Japanese that they prefer to stay in their home country.

We as a company believe, and it is my own personal opinion too, that you have to have an authentic chef - so a Japanese restaurant should have a Japanese chef, an Italian restaurant should have an Italian chef.

I see a lot of restaurants in Dubai that do a certain type of cuisine and yet they don't have a chef from that country, and I think you can taste that in the end product.

What we see as well is that within the company is that empowerment and decision-making skills are really important, so that personality and competency is what we're looking for.

Pishiri: At the moment, one category it's difficult to hire people in is Arabic waiters. We have an Arabic restaurant and it is very important to stay authentic, as Ruben said, so we try to find Arabic service staff. But finding Arabic staff has been a real challenge.

Of course we don't want to differentiate between employees doing the same job with regards to pay, so we have a salary bracket that we stay within for certain jobs. But that doesn't help us find people. We don't want to bend, because if you offer one nationality higher wages or preferential treatment, you will of course demotivate everyone else.

And the turnover with Arabic waiters is pretty high; they come, they try it out, after a year they find a position for more money and they go. For us, that has always been the challenge with Arabic waiters: turnover and the package they expect when they join.

Tieken: It is difficult to hire Arabic staff. We treat everybody the same, so if you're a waiter then you get a waiter's package. You need consistency.

What are the biggest challenges for you in the current climate?

Jegat-Deniau: That we had to lower the average cheque cost to keep the same flow of people coming in. Another challenge was implementing a lot of saving strategies, while having to do the same amount of work and keep the operation running in the same way.

Johnson: From a human resource point of view, we are of the opinion that the current situation offers a lot more opportunities as there are many more job seekers out there.

Pishiri: Last year it was completely different; accommodation was a major challenges as it was very expensive and the budget we had done was not covering rent increases in the UAE.

But this isn't an issue this year as rents have dropped significantly.

Also finding and retaining skilled staff was a problem until recently, but not now.

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