Research: What People (Really) Think About Working In Hotels

A few months ago, I attended a career fair here in San Francisco and asked people if they would consider working in hospitality and what they thought about a career here. It seems like a very stressful industry. What I heard at that career fair started me on a journey to understand more about what people who don't yet work in hospitality think about working in hospitality and what it would take to get them to work in this industry today. Today's episode is a special one because I wanted to tell you about the research project that came out of that and how it can help you. What I did, with support from Remington Hospitality and UpShift, is ask more than 2,000 people across the US how they think about jobs and career planning, their perception of working in hospitality today and more. You can see the results of my research at hoteloperationscom, but I wanted to share a couple of data points with you now as a preview. The first one is that personal referrals tops the list of the most useful ways of finding jobs for participants in the study. For me, this underscores the importance of creating an employee experience and work environment that people will tell their friends about. You can give people referral bonuses. That is probably a good strategy and has a time and place, but there's so much power in building a culture that people just can't help but talking about and referring other people to. Another thing I found was that pay and wages are the top factor for how people are making career decisions. This isn't true for everyone, but it's most commonly the number one criteria by a significant margin. That may or may not surprise you, but as much as we talk about career advancement opportunities in hospitality which is true we also need to be competitive with wages to get people in the door. The good news is that many of you have already made a lot of effort to create compelling opportunities in this area, so that's encouraging, but something to keep in mind. It's almost table stakes. The third thing I found is that tech and HR jobs topped the areas of interest when people are thinking about what would be interesting working in hotels or hotel companies. I asked people about nearly 20 different areas that you could work in, so it's interesting to see those top the list, as both are really big areas of opportunity in hospitality today. What was also interesting is that front office roles were number three on that list, which is a need for many hospitality businesses but I think, also speaks to the desire that many people have to be in fun environments where they can interact with other people. Those are just a couple of things I found. You can get the rest of the report at hoteloperationscom. I'd love to hear what you think about the study, as well as any questions or insights you have on this topic. Be sure to join our community on LinkedIn and let's talk about it.