While waiting for a friend in a hotel lounge recently, I had the chance to speak with the in-house staffing manager prior to his meeting and interview with a prospective employee. The manager, Randall, had been actively recruiting for a new sales manager to bring in more convention business and to oversee catering and meeting arrangements. After being unsatisfied with his previous interviewees, he was feeling frustrated by the entire interviewing process, and wasn’t too excited to do his next interview.

 

Since I caught him with a few minutes until his next applicant, and my friend still hadn’t arrived, he had time to share a few of his frustrations. When I asked him what his biggest issue was in filling his opening, Randall said that at the moment there were fewer people applying for jobs in the hospitality industry, regardless of position. He attributed this to the common belief that the hotel business was still substantially hampered from the Covid 19 pandemic. While this is partially true, it was a bit ironic that the hotel Randall works for was booked at over 85% capacity, an achievement many hotels would love to accomplish. Overall, however, the hospitality industry is recovering.

 

One of the other things that concerned Randall was that many applicants did not have enough of the experience he was seeking. Although a few applicants might appear to have had relevant transferrable skills, concrete evidence of the specific qualifications he was seeking were sorely lacking. That most of the applicants had no hospitality experience at all was distressing to him.

 

In reality, some candidates’ transferable skills were quite possibly relevant, but Randall was being rigid in his expectations. In the absence of closer-matching qualifications, Randall needed to consider sales and organizational backgrounds from more diverse environments. Though not all sales management positions are the same, it behooved Randall to give serious consideration to applicants from other industries who had the diversity in their skills and transferrable experience to fit the bill. For examples, candidates from industries like broadcasting, media, advertising and similar backgrounds could be successful in the hotel’s opening. Sure, they aren’t exact matches, but the necessary communication skills, people skills, the ability to negotiate, present information and listen to prospective customer needs are all relevant and close enough to what could be used in a hospitality setting for a strong candidate to achieve success.

 

Of course, in part, the onus is on the candidate to present their most relevant skills and experience in such a way that the employer can easily recognize their qualifications and understand what they have done, and what they know, regardless of previous environments, that they can do what the employer needs them to do.

 

And it certainly helps when the interviewer can see beyond the obvious to extract relevant parallels from the candidate’s experience conveyed on their resume and from the interview process. Unfortunately, not all interviewers have that ability. Job candidates usually offer far more than what can be parsed from their resume alone.

 

Understanding the transferability of one’s skills is a necessity in today’s rapidly evolving job market. From the specifics stated in many job announcements, you might expect that the employers’ requirements are fairly rigid and limited, but most often that represents an “ideal” candidate. It might take a little research to fully understand what an employer really needs so that an applicant can tailor their content to fit the specifics the employer is looking for. Applicants also need to be comfortable explaining the relevant connections between their past experience and how that can be successfully applied to a different environment. When the candidate cannot do this, the interviewer is on a fishing expedition trying to extract details without the clarity they need to successfully fill their opening.

 

Applicants should present the core relevance of their experience as it pertains to what the employer needs done, and be able to clearly communicate the connections between that past experience and the requirements of the job being applied for. Whether you have a long work history in one field or have explored a number of different positions and industries, when you get to the core of what you can do for the prospective employer, their picture of your qualifications becomes clearer and increases your chances of getting hired.

 

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