Realizing that overworked general managers have been facing difficulties meeting labor needs, Atlanta, Georgia-based private hotel management and investment company Hospitality Ventures Management Group (HVMG) developed a specialized team of Talent Acquisition Specialists (TAS) to focus only on staffing needs.
The company also launched the Talent Acquisition Center of Excellence (TACOE), a strategic initiative to source property level talent, support and accelerate the hiring procedure of its hotels, as well as take some of the recruiting and on-boarding processes off HVMG general managers.
“The Talent Acquisition Center of Excellence has taken a tremendous amount of stress off the teams at individual hotels and added value for our owners. The initial results have already exceeded expectations,” said Sue Sanders, executive vice president and chief human resources officer at HVMG. “This number will grow as more HVMG hotels are on-boarded into the program. We have not only directly sourced qualified applicants through many different channels, but we have also reduced the time it takes to review job applications which has sped up the overall hiring process. By September, we were above 80% of our pre-pandemic staffing levels.”
HVMG recently announced the initial results of the TACOE initiative from the 120-day beta program which sourced and filed more than 400 hourly openings. In tandem with hiring and training the TAS team and launching TACOE across the HVMG portfolio, the initial results include:
- 7.5 days – The average cycle time from when an application is posted to when the position is hired
- 31.9 days – The average cycle time from when a requisition is completed to when the position is hired
- 404 positions filled
- 1,490 candidates presented to hiring managers
- 1,920 in-depth TAS interviews conducted
- 4,299 applications reviewed
The procedure
Explaining the TACOE initiative, Sanders said open position requirements are established between the hiring manager and TAS, a five-person team led by Director of Talent Excellence Sunny Larkin-Woody. The team tries to accomplish four key goals — free up scarce property level resources, simplify and streamline the hiring process, source and recruit new talent more efficiently and provide a competitive, differentiating advantage to HVMG.
Multiple candidate sourcing processes or tools are used, depending on the position and market, which is followed by assessing the candidate’s qualification, interview and feedback of the hiring manager and eventually offering the job and completing employment checks of the candidate.
Investment, ROI
While TACOE’s value is “four times the investment,” the investment and projected ROI will vary as the number of hotels changes, with TACOE scaling up or down as the number changes, Sanders said. “The time back in the hiring managers’ day and the use of specialists who are bringing on board higher quality candidates more rapidly is difficult to measure with hard costs.”
The initiative has proven to be a success, so far, but there are still areas where it can improve. “We had to work very closely with the hiring manager to ensure they are asking TACOE to source only the positions needed, so that no one’s time is wasted,” Sanders said.
HVMG also learned that our current technology systems are a bottle neck in the sourcing and hiring processes and it is addressing this expeditiously, according to Sanders. “We learned that with new transitions to assign a dedicated TAS as these properties have unique sourcing challenges being new to our portfolio, systems, processes and culture.”
Success stories
For Michelle Davis, lead general manager of HVMG’s Alabama portfolio, centralizing the search for potential employees, scheduling and conducting interviews has helped save time.
“When we took over the Homewood Suites in Mobile, we had virtually no room attendants and also were shorthanded at the front desk, so we didn’t have the staff to manage the business we had,” Davis said. “As a result, other managers and I were cleaning up to 30 rooms per day, which meant I didn’t have time to do much recruiting. Without TACOE, we would still be in the same position. Equally, if not more importantly, we’ve been able to fill multiple positions that would otherwise remain empty.”
General Manager of Marriott Greensboro-High Point Airport Jim Ceh faced similar circumstances and filled around 17 positions through TACOE since July. “Our managers are experts in operations and running departments, not necessarily in recruiting. So, our Talent Acquisition Specialist has made a huge impact and really complimented our success,” says Ceh.
Besides planning to complete the on-boarding of 100% of properties by 2022, HVMG will also evaluate sourcing salaried managers for these properties through TACOE in 2022. “We are replacing and reworking the system bottlenecks in the sourcing process to further reduce the cycle time to hire and increase the quality of the candidate,” Sanders said.