Recruitment and Selection Within Hilton Hotels

The Hilton hotels comprises of a chain of hotels and resorts. They were founded by Conrad Hilton in 1943. The hotels are over 2800 in numbers and located all over the world. They are owned and by Hilton worldwide. The Hilton Hotels Corporation operates the hotels or may franchise the operations to some independent bodies (Vincent, 2009, p. 11).

The Hilton hotel is a famous hotel world wide which commands a very wide customer base. It has a labour force of more than fifteen thousand workers world wide. The hotel has its own unique policies that make it remain in business. The management lays emphasis on the department of human resource in areas of recruitment and maintenance of the employees as well as their welfare. The workers of the hotel are always very efficient in service delivery. This is made possible through numerous trainings that are regularly conducted in an effort to maintain efficiency (Wilkinson, 1998, p. 247).

There has been very few complains by the customer on service delivery. The employees work in two shifts the day and night shifts. All the rooms in these hotels are fitted with telephone lines to make sure that customers are served as they wish irrespective of their social status. Efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery is fundamental in the training session to all the employees of the hotel. Each of the hotels has swimming pool which is attended by a highly trained life saver. The attendant ensures that visitors are able to enjoy to their maximum and attends to any injury that may occur in the course of swimming.

The human resource ensures that services given to their customers are efficient. The human resource ensures customer satisfaction. They regularly conduct research on customer satisfaction so that they can detect weaknesses that may arise and attend to them to maintain customers are always satisfied. The employees are trained on ways of impressing their customers all the way from the reception to the departure time. As a method of meeting the needs of the customers and retaining them, public relations and human resource department work closely (Rapport, 1984, p.254).

The hotels ensure they keep themselves in line with tradition. This is achieved through the human resource department which ensures that customers are served with food that relate to their traditions and culture. The employees are very keen to innovations. The staff comes up with strategies that maintain the hotel at the top in the industry (Crosby, 1996, p. 215).

The staff innovation capabilities are enhanced through regular trainings on hospitality courses. The hotel provides a good working atmosphere for their employees. Employees are given incentives to make them more productive. This includes accident cover, travel plans and offering of scholarship to employees who are voted best in service delivery. The employees are usually rewarded for their performance in order to create employees loyalty. The hotels human resource strategy ensures that new hotels are opened in areas where there is access to potential skilled and talented workers. They prefer employing employees from the region or location of the hotel (Peffer & Velga, 1999, pp. 69-73).

Recruitment and selection in Hilton hotels is done by the human resource department. The process involves use of interviews, psychometric testing and general assessment of the potential employee. The recruitment process is done either internally, externally or online. It starts with the identification of the vacancy, advertising of the vacancy, description of the job, the application, short listing of the potential employees, conducting of interviews, and assessment of the employee, making decisions and training of the successful employees. The human resource department focuses on assessments and interviews in line with job analysis, experience and intelligence of the employee in the industry (Thomas & Penthouse, 1990, pp. 666-667).

The hotel also employs the use of in tray exercise, group activities as well as role play in their recruitment process. The recruitment is done through careful management decision making coupled with widespread planning in order to make sure only the best candidate is employed. The candidate employed must be suit the hotel culture as well as ethics. Once new employees have been identified and inducted into the existing employees program at the Hilton hotel, this does not signify the end of this process. It is important therefore to ensure that the best human resource I retained (Hardwick 2004, pp 89-93).

The hotels embrace the issue of workplace diversity. The selection and recruitment process is usually open to all people irrespective of their colour, race and sex. The hotels work force contains people from all walks of life. Employment is not restricted in terms of personal characteristics, gender, race, colour or place of origin. The workforce characteristics of the hotel are based on qualification, experience and the overall objectives of the hotel. The corporation uses diversity to increase its competitive advantage. Employees from different backgrounds are recruited and trained so as to arm them with the skills required (Kreisberg, 1999, pp. 245-246).

The human resource encounters some challenges in course of the duty; these challenges are due to failure by the organisation to fully commit itself to human resource development poor training and development of the staff and lack of trust between the employees and the human resource managers, lack of willingness and ability of the managers to understand the needs of the staff, little organisation support, time pressures and heavy workloads (Youndt & et al, 1996, pp. 836-845).

The human resource department in these hotels have devised measures and means through which these challenges are handled. The hotels employs the use of line managers who to ease the workload pressures and address the problems affecting the human resource. The challenge of training needs is solved by better understanding of the training and development needs of the workforce by the senior managers (Ashford, 1989, pp. 207-212).

Human resource challenges in hotel industry can be solved by instituting measures such as issuing of job description during the hiring process. Through this employees are able to understand what they are expected and supposed to do. The employees need to be issued with employment an agreement which spells out the expectations and relationship of the employee from the employer. A job description assists the employee to understand what he or she is expected to do. The employees are required to be provided with the policies and procedures of the business so that they act within their capacity.

Upon employment the employees should be taken over through an induction process to in a formal manner. They should be made to understand all the business procedures and comply with them. The communication process in the business should be clear and well coordinated. Effective and efficient communication is vital in business success. The business should employ motivation programs meant to increase their output. Rewards assist in establishing a good culture of trust between the employees and the employer.

The organizational culture of the Hilton hotels is that the hotel is divided into departments which are in charge of various tasks. The employees are trained to meet the expectation of the department. To ensure customer satisfaction the public relations and the human resource department work closely. This helps them to come up with strategies that ensure customer satisfaction. (Dann & Hornsey, 1986, p.23).

Reference List

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