Screening Hotel Employees Demands that Extra Step

 

Screening hotel employees must take into consideration, not only the safety of the other employees as in most businesses, but also the safety of the customers: the guests. While normal employee background checks must be used, these should go a bit further and deeper, and hotels should take steps to design employee psychometric screening to suit their own specific needs.

These standard background checks include previous employments, the applicant’s previous addresses and criminal record checks. These are actually connected in that any gaps in the first two could infer the third. Thus, if an employee cannot satisfactorily explain a gap in their employment, then it could indicate a period in a penal institution.

The same could be true if there is a gap between the residential addresses provided. Many try to explain this away as ‘between jobs’, or ‘between addresses’, but a social security check should be able to provide more information on this. Also, while a criminal record check is not easy to carry out since there is no national criminal record database that is open to anybody except law enforcement officers, it can still be done by checking through the court records in counties in which the applicant has previously worked or lived, especially during the ‘missing’ years.

What you are looking for in a hotel employee is somebody that is not only honest, with no previous convictions, but one for whom a hotel job is more than just a temporary job until something better for them turns up. They must have a commitment to the type of work, and be the type of person for whom looking after guests is a worthwhile job and something they want to make a profession of. They should be more than just people looking for a summer vacation job, but potential full time professionals.

For that reason the interviewers should be professionals that can spot those not genuinely interested, and can choose the right type of applicant for the job. Standard screening is also essential, and all hotels should carry out drug tests; urine tests can provide results within 48 hours. Most hotel employees appreciate working with colleagues that know to be clean from drugs.

Other screening tests should be designed by each individual hotel based upon its own needs and experiences. Much depends on the job being offered, and you will be looking for a higher educational standard in a potential manager than in a maid. However, both must be equally trustworthy and lack any criminal record whatsoever. They should also preferably have previous hotel experience, and have left their previous hotel with a good reference. This should also be checked.

Many hotels design their own screening tool to achieve this, taking the view that a guest-centered profession should reflect that need in their employees rather than using just the normal employment background checks. Much of the screening in these tools uses psychology and multi-option questionnaires designed to determine exactly how suited the applicant is to the job being offered.

Such psychometric tools can be changed to suit the needs of each position within the hotel, with emphasis being given to the activities and security levels required in each of these positions. That is something that every hotel could consider developing for themselves, with the help of professional psychometric screening companies.

This, of course, does not detract from the fact that the usual background checks have to be made. Apart from the employment, residential and criminal record checks, you are advised to carry out credit checks, checks on the applicant’s driving record, especially if the job could involve driving.

Screening hotel employees is very similar to that of any other employee, only the honesty of the employee must be very carefully checked and their ability to work closely with guests determined. Psychometric testing can be crucial in helping employers to make these decisions, and in most cases the applicants potential is more important than experience since that can be taught, but potential cannot.