It’s the situation every landlord dreads. A key team member hands in their notice right before the busy season, and suddenly you’re scrambling to fill the gap. The temptation to stick a “Staff Wanted” sign in the window and hire the first person who seems halfway competent is immense. But this reactive, rushed approach to hiring is one of the biggest hidden costs in the pub trade.
Recruitment is central to your pub’s performance. It’s not just an HR task to be dealt with when a crisis hits; it’s a strategic process that deserves your time and attention. Recruiting the right people is the difference between a smooth-running, profitable business with a happy team and one plagued by high staff turnover, internal conflict, and inconsistent service.
This guide will show you how to recruit pub staff using a structured, professional process. By moving from panicked gap-filling to proactive team-building, you can save yourself time, money, and countless headaches, all while building a team that your customers will love.
The Problem: Why Your ‘Staff Wanted’ Sign Isn’t Working
Recruiting the right people for your pub has never been more challenging. The hospitality industry has always been a high-turnover sector, often reliant on younger employees in lower-paid roles who may move on to more fulfilling work. This has been amplified by a changing UK labour market, where factors like the UK’s departure from the EU have influenced the availability of candidates.
When faced with these challenges, the most common mistake managers make is to recruit only when they notice an immediate staff shortage. This “rush recruiting” puts you on the back foot. You’re limited to the small pool of applicants who happen to see your advert within a tight timeframe, forcing you to ‘settle’ for a candidate just to fill a gap.
The cost of getting this wrong is staggering. A bad hire can:
- Increase Staff Turnover: The right person will get along with your current team, but the wrong person can cause conflict and stress, potentially causing other valued staff to leave.
- Waste Time and Money: Making a hiring mistake is expensive. You waste resources on the initial advert, the interview process, and the induction, only for the person to be non-productive or leave a few weeks later, forcing you to start the entire process again.
- Damage Your Reputation: An employee who provides poor service can quickly damage the reputation you’ve worked so hard to build.
Taking a long-term, planned view of recruitment is essential to attract the best candidates and avoid these costly errors.
The Solution: A Four-Stage Process for Perfect Pub Hires
Effective recruitment is a decision-making process that can be broken down into a series of clear stages. By spending time getting each stage right, you dramatically increase your chances of finding the perfect fit for your team.
Stage 1: Defining the Role (Job Analysis) This is the crucial first step. Before you even think about writing an advert, you need to define accurately and clearly what the role involves and the type of person you need.
Stage 2: Attracting the Right Applications Once you know who you’re looking for, you can decide on the best way to reach them. This stage involves choosing where to advertise and how to ask people to apply.
Stage 3: Selecting Your Star Player This is where you sift through the applications and use selection methods, like interviews, to identify the best candidates and compare them against your criteria.
Stage 4: Making the Appointment and Nailing the Induction The final stage involves making a formal offer, providing feedback to unsuccessful candidates, and ensuring the new hire has a smooth and effective introduction to the business.
Deep Dive: Defining the Role
This is the foundation of your entire recruitment process. If you get this stage wrong, everything that follows will be built on shaky ground. It involves two key components: the Job Analysis and the Person Specification.
Job Analysis: This involves identifying the key elements of the job. Ask yourself what the person will actually be doing day-to-day. What are the core responsibilities? You should also ask if the job needs to be done in the same way it was previously. Could it be part-time instead of full-time, or could you offer a job-share arrangement?.
Person Specification: This follows from the job analysis. Here, you define the required and desired characteristics of the employee. What skills, qualifications, and attributes do they need to succeed?. This is where you can use customer feedback as a powerful tool. Look at your reviews on sites like TripAdvisor. What do your customers praise? Many positive reviews highlight how much customers appreciate
friendly, attentive, and welcoming staff. They value
quick and efficient service, even during busy times. These are not just nice-to-haves; these are the essential soft skills that should form the core of your person specification.
The outcome of this stage is a clear job description and person specification, which will guide every subsequent decision you make.
Deep Dive: Attracting and Selecting
With a clear definition of the role and the ideal candidate, you can now begin your search.
Attracting Applications: You need to advertise in a place that is accessible to your target candidates. There are various places you can attract potential applicants, such as online job sites, in local newspapers, through social media, or even by using a recruitment agency. You can ask applicants to apply with a CV or by filling out a standard application form.
Sifting and Selection: Once applications start coming in, the next step is to sift through them, comparing each one to the criteria you laid out in your person specification. It is crucial to stick to your original criteria to ensure you consider all applications fairly.
Once you have a shortlist, you can invite candidates to your chosen selection method, which is most commonly an interview. You can conduct these one-to-one, or with a panel. The goal of the interview is to gather the information you need to find out if a candidate is suitable for the role. Be sure to prepare questions that allow you to assess their performance against your key criteria. For example:
- To test for efficiency: “Describe a time you had to work under pressure during a busy service. How did you handle it?”
- To test for a welcoming attitude: “What does great customer service mean to you in a pub environment?
Case Study: Hiring at ‘The Red Lion’
Let’s see how this process works in practice for a landlord named Dave.
- The Old Way (Rush Recruiting): Dave’s most reliable bartender quits with two weeks’ notice. Panicked, Dave puts a sign in the window and posts on his personal Facebook page. He interviews two people and hires the one with the most experience. The new bartender, Liam, knows how to pull a pint, but he’s sullen with customers and clashes with the rest of the team. The atmosphere in the pub suffers, and Liam quits after six weeks. Dave has wasted time and money and is back to square one.
- The New Way (Structured Process): The next time a vacancy comes up, Dave decides to do it properly.
- Define: He performs a Job Analysis and creates a Person Specification. He reads his TripAdvisor reviews and makes “friendly and welcoming attitude” an essential criterion.
- Attract: He places a detailed advert on a hospitality-specific online job board.
- Select: He receives 15 applications and creates a shortlist of four candidates who closely match his criteria. During the one-to-one interviews, he asks behavioural questions to see how they would handle real-life pub scenarios.
- Appoint: He offers the job to a candidate named Sarah, who has slightly less experience but a fantastic, positive attitude. He then calls the other three candidates to let them know they were unsuccessful and offers them constructive feedback. Sarah completes a thorough induction and becomes a beloved member of the team and a favourite with the regulars.
By investing a little more time upfront, Dave has made a hire that benefits his business for the long term.
The Final Hurdle: Appointment and Induction
The recruitment process doesn’t end with the interview. The final steps are just as important for setting your new team member up for success.
Making the Offer and Handling Rejection: Once you’ve made a decision, you should make a verbal offer to the successful candidate, which should be followed by a formal written offer. It’s also crucial to inform the unsuccessful candidates. Simply telling them they didn’t get the job gives a negative impression of your organisation. Taking the time to give constructive feedback is a “gift” to the unsuccessful candidate that helps them in their career and protects your reputation as a good employer.
The Induction: Once the person is appointed and you have completed the necessary checks, such as their right to work and references, the final piece of the puzzle is the induction. A clear induction plan should be in place from day one. This gives the new hire a proper introduction to the organisation, their new team, and the specifics of their role, ensuring they have everything they need to move forward successfully.
Conclusion: Your Pub’s Most Important Investment
Learning how to recruit pub staff effectively is one of the most valuable skills a landlord can possess. It requires a shift in mindset—from seeing recruitment as a reactive chore to viewing it as a strategic, ongoing process that is fundamental to your pub’s health and performance.
By investing the time and effort to properly define the roles you need, attract the right people, and select them based on clear criteria, you can break the costly cycle of high turnover. You will build a stable, happy, and high-performing team that works well together and provides the kind of excellent service that keeps customers coming back. Ultimately, the people you hire are your pub’s greatest asset.
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