Thanks to a boom in the Great British staycation 2020, the Rick Stein restaurant group is hiring across the board and is keen to attract the best talent from around the UK.
Whilst a lot of London and inner-cities are yet to fully reopen with many restaurants, theatres and tourist attractions still boarded up, Cornwall is busy and most definitely open for business.
The Rick Stein portfolio contains 13 eateries and eight different accommodation options, including restaurants with rooms, luxury cottages and self catered barns. Each property across the board is close to full occupancy throughout the summer season, which is expected to extend throughout September and October.
The company has had to go through a tough restructure in order to survive and there was much talk of redundancies and restaurant closures during lockdown, however the roles lost were mainly in centralised areas and not customer facing. Added to that a number of local staff have decided not to return to customer facing roles within the family run restaurant and hotel group, there is a real need for new talent.
Stein is reaching out to those in other parts of the country who are struggling to find work in hospitality. He said, “If you have found yourself out of work due to the Covid-19 pandemic, I urge you to consider coming to Cornwall. It’s thriving and with travel bans still in place there is great hope that the staycation will extend through to early winter and bring some much needed revenue to the locality.
'We are looking for chefs, waiting staff, housekeepers, kitchen porters and reception staff, there are jobs available across the board. I would love to see new members of the team coming from more hard hit areas of the country, plus with a number of roles we even help with accommodation so there is no need to worry about that.”
Since beginning the recruitment process five weeks ago, the team have received over 3,500 applications, compared to the 5,500 received for the whole of 2019. One demi-chef position has received 111 applications, 10x the amount that would usually apply for such a role.
However. although there have been a large amount of applications coming through, the team are still struggling with a large number of no-shows throughout the process.
Michael Rabone, Head of Human Resources, said, 'Although this was an increasing challenge before lockdown, we've seen a noticeable increase in the number of no-shows at all stages of the recruitment process. This included candidates that apply and cannot be contacted, candidates invited to interview that do not attend and individuals offered roles that do not start work.
'There are also some scenarios where individuals are accepting jobs and moving to another role within the first week or two. These scenarios all appear to be a consequence of multiple job applications being made and the potential opportunity to consider a number of options.'