Hospitality students 'headhunted'

Hospitality skill shortages reflect a lack of ability rather than interest, with employers rejecting nine out of ten job applications, industry insiders say.

Hospitality management college William Blue said employers were cherry picking students who hadn’t completed their training, because too many job applicants were unqualified.

“Headhunters are now reserving hospitality students in their first year of study to combat the growing skills gap,” said college head Andrew Ugarte.

Talent resourcing manager at Intercontinental Hotels Group, Andrew Morley, said he received plenty of job applications but had to reject most of them. “On average only ten per cent make it to round two,” he said.

Mr Morley said the group’s hotels across south-east Australia had a couple of hundred vacancies each year for entry-level leadership positions as finance, human resources, sales and marketing managers, as well as operational roles such as restaurant managers. But most applicants lacked either the qualifications – diploma-level at least – or the specific skills.

“They don’t fit the required criteria,” he said.

“We get a lot of people who see the industry as a place they can come if they haven’t got the depth of tertiary qualifications that other industries have. That can be a perception, but we choose just as carefully as any other industry.”

Mr Morley said he didn’t discard applications lightly. “We spend more time than many people would in reviewing resumés, and making sure we’re not rejecting someone who may have something we didn’t see at first.”

Hospitality training has attracted plenty of controversy in recent years. Chefs’ inclusion in the Migrant Occupations in Demand List was partly blamed for a skewing of international education, with students flocking into Australia for residency rather than educational purposes.

More recently, hospitality became one of the fields of training essentially defunded by the Victorian government, which slashed funding rates for some courses to just $1.50 per student contact hour.

The state government said it had targeted cheap-to-run courses which had experienced explosive enrolment growth, in fields with questionable job opportunities.

However, hospitality meets none of these criteria. The training facilities are often expensive, Victorian enrolments have grown at average rates, and tourism and hospitality are among the few employers in many regional areas.

There are an estimated 35,800 tourism vacancies across Australia and another 56,000 workers will be needed by 2015, according to last year’s ‘Australian Tourism Labour Force Report’.

The study found recruitment difficulties and skills deficiencies were the biggest problems, followed by retention issues.

Industry groups have lobbied for skilled hospitality workers – particularly chefs – to be placed on the Skilled Occupation List, which prioritises occupations for the skilled migration program.

The latest iteration of the SOL, released just two weeks ago, saw a bit of movement. Chemists, audiologists, bricklayers and tilers were removed, while production managers, metallurgists, optometrists and computer systems engineers were added.

However chefs remained off the list. Skills Australia, which compiles the SOL, said chefs didn’t meet the criteria.

Requirements include a need for extended training, and a low propensity for practitioners to move on into other types of jobs. “I have great sympathy for the hospitality industry, but chefs don’t meet the criteria for the SOL,” said CEO Robin Shreeve.

He said hospitality’s problem was labour shortage rather than skill shortage, with many trained practitioners moving into other industries.

“It’s as much about flow as about stockpile,” he said.

Critics say the industry has problems retaining workers because it doesn’t pay them enough. But Mr Morley said pay rates were in line with other service sectors such as retail and health.

However the Employment Department’s ‘Australian Jobs’ guide gives most hospitality jobs – including cooks, waiters, café workers and bakers – the lowest rating for median earnings.

Chefs, café and restaurant managers, hotel service managers and travel advisers attract the second lowest rating, suggesting median full-time salaries below $50,000 a year.

Source: The Australian, 25 June 2012