March 24, 2003NATION'S RESTAURANT NEWS

Study shows students eager to work in hospitality

By Dina Berta

Miami Despite the public's low opinion of opportunity in the hospitality industry, students see great promise in their chosen fields, according to a recent survey at Florida International University's School of Hospitality Management here.

The study, conducted by graduate students, found that hospitality majors are passionate about future careers in the industry, see great potential for advancement in their jobs and many are already gaining on the job experience as they work toward their degrees.

The results should give restaurant operators a better sense of the characteristics of management candidates coming out of the nation's hospitality schools and ideas about how to capitalize on students' enthusiasm to attract and retain them, participants in the survey project said.


A study at Florida International University's School of Hospitality Management showed that graduate students want potential for advancement when choosing a career in the hospitality industry.
"There are many perceptions about the typical manager recruited from college, including that they will be young and inexperienced, they will only be there for a short time, that they want to get paid at the top of the scales, and money and promotions are their big motivators," said Joni Thomas Doolin, president of People Report, a Dallas based research firm that tracks human resources data for restaurant companies. "This research would tend to contradict a lot of those ideas," she said.

People Report assisted with the survey, which was conducted by three graduate students guided by associate professor David Talty and assistant professor Ahmed Boubdellah.

Called "Career Choice Drivers and Expectations of Candidates for Hospitality Industry Employment," the survey is based on responses from about 200 undergraduate and graduate students. Talty hopes to expand the survey by taking it to other hospitality schools.

"We started looking at this because of the magnitude of the problem of recruiting and retention in the industry," said Talty, who teaches restaurant management courses. "We wanted to find out if we could turn up any information on what's motivating them to pick a hospitality career that would be useful to the industry."

Two of the most noteworthy survey findings are students' passion toward the industry and their expectation that a career in hospitality holds potential for advancement, he said.

The students' feelings about the industry are not naive; roughly 85 percent of FIU's hospitality students currently are working part time in foodservice, he said.

The average age of the respondents was 26.

"I think students are passionate and really want to prove themselves," said Joe McCully, lead student on the research project. McCully is working toward a master's degree in hospitality from FIU.

"Passion typically translates to having the opportunity to be challenged, engaged, learning new skills and meeting new people," People Report's Doolin said. "It seems like there would be a great fit with the hospitality industry."

While hotel companies have long been heavy recruiters at college campuses, the restaurant industry traditionally has been less active, said Doolin, whose company closely tracks the demographics of newly hired assistant managers.

"We have observed a general reluctance on the part of many companies to venture into the arena of college recruiting, which tends to have a longer payback and better results than recruiting in the currently available labor pool," she said.

One company that aggressively has pursued college students is Houston based Pappas Restaurants, which requires that its general managers have a four year degree.

Pappas' director of recruiting, Beth Harrelson, who also runs one of the chains' Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen restaurants in Dallas, visits 15 campuses throughout the year.

Harrelson said that Pappas actively began recruiting from colleges and universities five years ago.

"I'm meeting students who are highly motivated, driven young individuals," she noted.

Graduates are hired at a beginning manager's salary and work in hourly positions in their five months of management training. By the end of the training program, they are well equipped to step into demanding management positions in Pappas' high volume restaurants, she said.

Pappas also offers a select number of internships to college students.

"With a strong internship program, you get that student in long enough to learn the company's culture, and when they graduate, it's a natural choice to be a part of that company," Harrelson said. "This person also will go back to the college campus and tell all. If he had a great experience, it's a free mouthpiece on that campus for you and your organization."

Internships and mentoring programs, not only at the college level but also at the high school level, inspire young people to pursue careers in the industry and allow companies to cultivate a source for future managers, Doolin said.

The FIU survey revealed that nearly 44 percent of the students had picked hospitality for future careers by the time they had graduated from high school.

Such early decision making comes as no surprise to Mary Mino, president and chief executive of the Colorado Restaurant Association Educational Foundation, which is heavily involved in ProStart, the school to career curriculum developed by the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation in Chicago.

Of the 650 Colorado high school students involved in ProStart last year, about 64 percent are choosing to pursue careers in the industry, Mino said.

In a national survey of ProStart students by the NRAEF, 65 percent said they would continue to work in hospitality while going to college. Of those not going to college, 69 percent expected to get jobs right away in the industry.

"Operators right now are doing a great job of taking ProStart students into their restaurants and showing them the business of foodservice and restaurant management," Mino said. "During these very difficult economic times, we just need them to continue to open their doors and to make those decisions to mentor students."


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