During Black History Month, Georgia Institute of Technology’s dining services personalized its celebration with the help of a team member from Trinidad and Tobago. The Atlanta-based dining department featured several different regions as part of its programming, and the employee developed a menu that showcased the flavors of his home country. “Not only was it a teaching experience for his fellow culinarians in the kitchen, but he was able to reach out and explain his background to our student body,” says Campus Executive Chef Jonathan Elwell. “He took great pride in that.”
Hiring individuals from diverse backgrounds and experiences not only creates organic teaching moments like this, Elwell says, but the different viewpoints also help his crew become better problem-solvers. Here’s how Elwell and other operators are able to recruit a diverse range of job candidates.
Diversity shouldn’t be an afterthought in the recruiting process—it should touch every aspect of it, Elwell says. To help minimize the barriers to entry, Georgia Tech’s dining team has job applications in both Spanish and English.
Vanderbilt University Dining has formed partnerships with different community organizations in Nashville, helping to widen the operation’s candidate pool. Working with the nearby International Center for Empowerment, the university’s team has recruited a dozen immigrants and refugees this year. The team also works with a veterans’ resources nonprofit to attract former service members.
Similarly, Minneapolis Public Schools' nutrition team works with the district's adult basic education department to create a foodservice management class for community members of different backgrounds. "This class has provided us with candidates who have, in turn, helped spread the word of open positions," says Michele Carroll, culinary and nutrition services business manager for the district.
The culinary team at Ohio Living Westminster-Thurber in Columbus, Ohio, has found several older candidates through job placement and training nonprofit Goodwill. "A lot of millennials want $15 an hour and nothing too menial," says Jason Koprivich, director of culinary and nutritional services for the senior living community. "These seniors are coming back into the workplace in a huge way, and they're wrapping their arms around our younger people and helping to shape them." Some job-seekers working with Goodwill aren't always a good fit for the healthcare community, because of their criminal backgrounds and organization's background check policy, Koprivich says. However, members of the department donate their time to mock-interview people who might not be able to qualify for a job at the facility, which helps spread the word. One person who participated in the job training sent his daughter over to apply.
Georgia Tech’s dining team attends community job fairs, but Elwell doesn’t go solo—he brings as many team members into the fold as possible. “Someone might pick up on stuff that the other people at the table don’t pick up on based on their experiences,” he says.
During one interview, a member of Georgia Tech’s dining staff who wore a headscarf noticed that the potential hire was staring at it. When she asked the interviewee if he had questions, he shared that he had never seen a headscarf before. The staff member took the opportunity to educate the candidate and tell him what it meant to her. “It’s a very simple thing in making sure that we don’t judge first and go back and try to figure out what happened,” Elwell says.
His team is taught to have open dialogue and be conscious of how their body language or actions could be perceived as unwelcoming to different people. At least once a week during preshift huddles, Elwell’s team talks about diversity on a unit level. “It’s about setting an expectation for staff that we are all different, and that’s great,” he says.
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