Insight
How do hospitality and leisure employers hire well at scale?
Hospitality and leisure employers hire well at scale when applying takes minutes on a phone, every application is seen the day it arrives, and every site knows which channels bring the people who stay. The difference is made at the front of the process, where most candidates are lost before anyone has met them, not by adding recruiters at the back.
| Candidate | Role | Channel | Cost | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Maya OkaforChef | ChefManchester | Indeed | £4.20Hired | Hired |
| Josh CarterKitchen porter | Kitchen porterManchester | £2.90Interview | Interview | |
| Amara DialloTeam leader | Team leaderLondon | Sponsored | £6.10Screening | Screening |
| Darren HoltCustomer assistant | Customer assistantBristol | Adzuna | £3.40Applied | Applied |
What the evidence says
+42%
71%
£4.89
50%
Go deeper
What hospitality hiring is
Hospitality and leisure employers hire more people, more often, across more places than almost any other sector. A restaurant group refills the same kitchen roles in a hundred towns. A holiday park hires a season’s team in a few weeks. A gym chain, a contract caterer, a hotel group: each is running hundreds of small hiring processes at once, with a general manager in charge of each and a central team trying to see all of them.
The candidate is a person on a phone, often already working, deciding in a spare few minutes whether your role is worth the effort of applying. Hiring well at scale means making that answer yes, and then seeing the application the same day.
What goes wrong
The loss is at the front. Most visitors leave without applying, and most of the applications that do arrive are never viewed. In hospitality the effect is doubled by geography: a channel that fills front-of-house in one city brings nobody to the kitchen in another, and the same media plan runs in both.
Problem roles are the sharpest version. Chefs, night staff, lifeguards, roles in towns with thin supply: they stay open, they cost the most per application, and they are usually the roles the business can least afford to leave unfilled.
What customers found
Compass Group, a contract caterer hiring across many client sites, saw a 42% uplift in completed applications when its application was rebuilt and cut its cost per application for problem roles by 50%. Côte reduced its cost per hire by 71%. wagamama took 23,000+ applications at £4.89 each. Three hospitality employers, and in each case the change was at the front of the process.
What good looks like
A candidate near a restaurant can ask for evening shifts nearby and see the roles that fit, then apply in minutes without leaving the conversation. Questions about pay bands, uniforms and hours are answered around the clock from the employer’s own content. Every application is scored on arrival and ranked for the general manager, with the reasoning written down, and a person makes the decision. Head office sees cost per application by site, brand and channel, and moves the budget to what works. And when the season ends, the people who were good but not hired are not lost.
How inploi approaches it
inploi is the hiring experience platform for large frontline employers, and hospitality and leisure is where many of its customers hire. For candidates it is careers sites, conversational apply, the Candidate Agent and job distribution, on the ATS you already have. For the team it is the Hiring Agent, which ranks and recommends and never rejects, with hiring manager notifications and automations live, and structured screening and the talent pool in development with design partners. Analytics and attribution show every site its own funnel. It comes as software with a service: we build it with you and stay responsible for it working.
Conversational apply
The application that adapts to the role and finishes in minutes.
Do you have the right to work in the UK?
Yes
Do you hold a Level 3 PT qualification?
Yes, Level 3
Thanks, that’s everything. Application complete.
- Do you have the right to work in the UK?
- Yes
- Do you hold a Level 3 PT qualification?
- Yes, Level 3
Application complete.
Reading
FAQ
Because it never stops, it happens across many sites at once, and the candidate is usually on a phone between shifts elsewhere. Turnover keeps roles open, seasons multiply them, and a chef or a lifeguard role in one town can be a problem role while the same role in the next town fills in a week.
A role that stays open long after the others have filled, because the local supply is thin or the channel that used to work has stopped. Compass Group cut its cost per application for problem roles by 50% working with inploi; the change was at the front of the process, not in the price per click.
No. One careers site can carry many brands and locations, each with its own roles, content and answers, edited in Studio by your own team. Attribution is reported by location and brand so each general manager can see their own funnel.
inploi is independent of any ATS and fluent in all of them, with sync in both directions across 100+ integrations. Your ATS stays the system of record whichever one each part of the business runs.
A standard implementation takes eight to twelve weeks, depending on scope and how quickly your team can review and approve content. inploi manages the technical build and stays responsible for it working; that is what software with a service means.
Agents do the admin. Humans do the hiring.
See what inploi would take off your team.
The hiring experience audit takes four minutes.