The MINA Group

Michael Bates

Balancing Hiring Speed with Interview Consistency

Talent acquisition teams can balance hiring speed with quality while maintaining a positive candidate experience by utilizing position specific interview guides and criteria that ensure all applicants are viewed on an equal level.

At The Mina Group, we have detailed interview guides for each level of our hiring teams to ensure the candidate interview experience is in depth and that the same questions are not asked multiple times.

All interview feedback from each interview is housed in a single electronic candidate card via our ATS that can be viewed by all members of the hiring team for that specific location and position. This allows each interviewer to review the previous interview questions and notes and form their conversation accordingly.

Most importantly, our ATS allows feedback to be provided via a mobile app and/or on a laptop. This is extremely helpful for our culinary leaders who are frequently not in an office setting but are able to conduct interviews with all the necessary materials in hand.

Keeping Candidate Communication Personal and Responsive

At The Mina Group, we remain focused on the applicant experience from start to finish. We communicate with applicants, hiring team members and partners daily to ensure that all feedback is received in a timely manner and communication back to the candidate is as quick as possible. Following each interview step, it is our goal to respond to the applicant within 48 hours regarding next steps. When we get to the Stagier or Tasting phase of the interview process, we have detailed criteria and agendas that are shared with both the candidate and hiring team members to ensure a smooth experience from arrival to departure for the candidate. Our recruiters remain in touch throughout the process via email, text message and phone calls to ensure the best experience possible. We also live by the 24/7 open-door policy meaning a candidate knows and feels comfortable contacting a member of our recruiting team at any hour of the day and will receive a response in a timely manner from that recruiter in a timely manner.

Strengthening Candidate Relationships across Hiring Markets

We balance business hiring demands by building meaningful relationships with candidates. We have dedicated Recruiters that oversee our West Coast, East Coast, and corporate roles. This allows our recruiters to build meaningful relationships with the candidates, hiring teams and the hotel partners within their portfolios. These relationships allow our recruiters to be knowledgeable in the market they are responsible for and be able to provide candidates with accurate information regarding specific benefits and daily duties in each restaurant.

“People want to know exactly what their day-to-day lives will be like and ‘work/life balance’ is a real thing and should be discussed in an honest way.”

Our ATS allows our hiring teams to sync their calendars to the system which provides candidates with up-to-the-minute availability. We also allow candidates to choose a date and time that works best for them to ensure that interviews occur when both sides are free from other tasks and can provide their undivided attention to each other.

Combining AI Efficiency with Personalized Candidate Engagement

This is always a challenging question. Obviously, the continuous advancement of AI tools for sourcing potential candidates, transcribing interviews and reviewing resumes have had an impact on our talent acquisition and candidate engagement.

Sourcing assistants on job boards that can actively search resumes and send interest emails to candidates has allowed us streamline our sourcing process.

However, I believe that we, at The Mina Group, continue to hold personal connection and communication with each applicant as one of our most important areas of focus when it comes to talent acquisition. We pride ourselves on providing the best possible hospitality throughout our restaurants with every guest being treated as if it we are focused solely on them so why should that change when it comes to our recruitment practices.

Improving Hiring through Deeper Team Understanding

The advice I would offer is to truly get to know the hiring teams that you are submitting candidates to. Speak with them often, if the opportunity allows you to meet and spend time with them in person do so. This will allow you to understand their personality and you can use that knowledge when interviewing candidates to assess whether the members of the hiring team will work well with your potential candidate.

Be honest. I know the thought is that a recruiter is supposed to “sell the dream” but I find that this has changed post-pandemic. People want to know exactly what their day-to-day lives will be like and “work/life balance” is a real thing and should be discussed in an honest way.

The most rewarding part of my job is when I speak with a member of our team that I placed and whether it i 3s0 days in or a year in and they say “Mike, what you said during that first interview was exactly what’s happened. Thank you!”

It’s my job to set our individual restaurant teams and our company up for success. Honesty, human connection and the help of a few AI tools has allowed the recruitment process at The Mina Group to ensure the best possible experience for applicants. I look forward to the continued integration of AI tools in recruiting but stand by the tried and true practice of human connection.