ELECTRONIC HOUSE CALL - October 15, 1999

My little rant last week ("Who's Running Your Business?, www.restaurantdoctor.com/ehc/ehc88.html) brought a flood of comment, all of it in the "right on" vein. I was expecting at least a few people would ask to be dropped, but it appears I am not the only one who is tired of the whining. Take charge of your business, folks.

If you are going to change the way you recruit and hire people, you need a plan. Along that line, I want to share a note I received yesterday from Angela Lee, the Personnel and Training Director for the McGuire Management Group in Pensacola, Florida. She had just applied some of the ideas from my book, The Foolproof Foodservice Selection System and had this to say

SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION
I wanted to take a quick minute to thank you for rushing me The Foolproof Selection System. We employed our version of the Application for Employment and the Advice to Applicants letter and had very interesting results. I found I was able to eliminate candidates that would have normally been interviewed (and maybe hired) and interviewed those I may have otherwise overlooked.

I then used your interview questions and found them to be both helpful and insightful. Instead of dreading an interview where I asked the same boring questions and got the same boring answers, I found myself engaged in rather interesting conversations with some very intriguing people. I originally eliminated the question regarding the applicant's favorite school subject. I decided to use this question when one woman's eyes lit up and face reddened when she answered, "High school Biology because we got to dissect a cat!!!" Her response was so animated that I knew I found a "Superstar" (I was right!). I then found myself eagerly awaiting each applicants response to that question since it offers so much insight.

My training class this week has to be one of the best I have seen. They are lively, energetic and progressing much better than those in the past. Another interesting tidbit: most of my New Hires are much older than those in the past. These are the kind of people we dream of getting our hands on and are thrilled they are offering us their talents and years of experience.

Feel free to share this information with anyone who might be interested. In fact, I am willing to speak with anyone who has questions about this system. They may contact me at (850)433-2849 or via e-mail at ursa9@juno.com.

A note from the Doc:
For a closer look at Foolproof, go to www.restaurantdoctor.com/books.html.

ON THE WEB
It had to happen. My colleague Kathy McGinley wrote to inform me of www.bitterwaitress.com -- a forum for complaints from the waitstaff. It is worth a look. I admit that it is easy to dismiss much of it as whining, but there is a grain of truth to everything and it might cause you to re-examine the way you deal with your staff.

You might also want to take a look at www.egosurf.com. You enter your name (or any name you want to investigate) and within minutes, the search tool will return sites with that name and will keep looking for one week and email you the results of its searches. It is a great way to see who is talking about you (or your operation) on the Internet. I found my books for sale in several interesting places I knew nothing about. Thanks to Richard Schenkar for passing that along.

TRAINING R US
Finally, I am pleased to welcome Don Elkington to the family as chief staff trainer (or whatever title he likes!) Don has an extensive rap sheet in the hospitality industry and will be taking charge of delivering my staff training programs. My schedule (and fees!) made it difficult to stay actively involved in this area. Now we will be able to offer staff programs for a more reasonable investment and within a more responsive time frame. Don did two programs last week for a group of servers from Chevy's, Tony Roma's and Houlihan's and had their attention fully engaged for a full two hours! I was impressed! Drop me a line if you would like more information.

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