WE ❤️ HOSPITALITY - Jake Young

The last year has been terrible for the hospitality sector. Most businesses have seen extreme financial challenges and its reputation as an employer has been severely affected. We are now hearing from many, many of our clients about their fears for the future from staff shortages to skills gaps and top mid-senior talent moving to other sectors.

Krishnan Doyle is sharing his conversations with service industry leaders and operators on all that is good about hospitality & catering with the purpose to improve the sector's reputation as one of the largest employer worldwide but also as a great place to develop your career. 

How did you get into hospitality? 

I started in hospitality when I was 16 helping my aunt and her friend run large scale events and concerts in Colorado, US. That is what got me started, and after a gap year foreign exchange to Italy, I fell in love with the industry.

Do you think it is important to have studied hospitality to be a success in the sector? 

Not at all. I know a lot of very successful owners, operators, and staff who studied something completely different. I think what makes people successful in hospitality is a passion for product and service. If they have that, they can take their brand, products, or career anywhere.

Which leader or figure inspired you and why? 

I have always been inspired by leaders who focus on building a brand around their staff and employees like Brene Brown, John Mackey, Richard Branson, and Ricardo Semler. I think our industry still has a lot to learn when it comes to employee trust and thinking outside the box with employee culture.

What keeps you in the sector and why to you enjoy working in it?

I love working with all of the small businesses on the consulting front and helping make a difference in people’s businesses. From the operations side, I enjoy the complexity of hospitality along with creating products that people enjoy. 

Tell us about the development / training that you give to your teams and management. 

Our training always starts with who we are as a company and acting in accordance with our values. We build our systems to support the company values in a way that every value can be linked to a physical activity or routine. From there, it is all about product knowledge, consistency, and customer service at all levels along with creative problems solving. We put a lot of trust in our employees to make the right decision themselves without needing management approval, and our training helps support that. For managers, we train them on everything in the business from marketing to ordering and supply management to making sound business and employee related decisions, but we spend a lot of time training them on the soft skills of becoming a better leader. I can hire anyone who can run a P&L. We want our managers to be leaders who people want to work for and follow.

What advice would you give to those starting out in the sector? 

Keep pushing. The beginning is always hard going, and the industry takes a lot out of you at first. You have to push through that and remember the passion that got you started in the first place. That is true for line staff as well as owners. It takes time to ramp up, but when you do, this industry really is amazing.

If you could go back and tell yourself one piece of advice as you started your career, what would it be? 

Break away from corporate earlier. I stayed a long time building other people’s businesses. Now, I know I could have gotten out and started my own thing earlier. It’s a lot of failure that way, but it makes for way better understanding and lessons than staying in a safe corporate environment.

If you would like to take part as a leader in this thriving sector, get in touch with Krishnan (krishnan@corecruitment.com)