Recruiting the right people is perhaps the most important thing you can do as a hotelier to ensure the success of your business. Unfortunately, they’re not easy to find, and you’ll need a carefully thought-out selection process to sort the best from the rest. Before you reach that stage, however, you need access to a broad pool of talent from which to choose. Here’s a quick list of some of the places you should be looking for your next batch of hospitality employees.

1. Social media: unless you’re looking to fill upper level management posts, the people you need to attract will be hanging out on Facebook, Twitter, and the like. This is a great way to make passive jobseekers aware of your vacancies. These are the people who aren’t specifically looking for a new job, so won’t be checking the job boards and classifieds, but you might just be able to pique their interest online. If you do use these channels you might also want to make sure it’s easy and convenient for people to apply, especially via mobile devices. Similarly, you should also ensure that your own website has a careers page which lists current opportunities and presents an attractive account of what you have to offer to anyone looking for a career with your organization.

2. Colleges: there are three ways to look at the local colleges. First of all, you may be able to attract capable part time staff who will have the language skills to interact effectively with guests. Some of these employees may see the benefit of staying with you in the long term. Secondly, you can offer paid internships to young people who are interested in hospitality careers. If they show suitable potential you have an established pipeline to supply talent. The third option is to go directly to the schools offering hospitality and tourism courses and see if you can work in partnership with them to gain access to the best

3. Your staff: your own staff may well know of friends and family who would be interested in joining them at work. Some hotels actually offer financial incentives to staff who successfully introduce new recruits, and encourage employees to use their own social media accounts to inform their personal networks of any vacancies. If you choose to go down this particular route, you might find that your staff suddenly have a vested interest in making sure the new recruits thrive in their jobs, and so start giving extra help to make sure that has the best chance of happening.

4. Internally: for some of your mid-to high ranking vacancies, the ideal candidate might be on staff already, but you haven’t noticed their skills yet because their current role hasn’t allowed them a chance to shine. Don’t overlook this particular group of potential hires, because they already know the company, they allow savings on recruitment costs, and you already know their character if not their skills.

5. Paid advertising: the choices you make in deciding where to buy advertising space for your vacancies will depend on your size and location. Smaller properties located away from major cities might benefit from using the classified section of the local newspaper, while bigger chains can consider a more widely visible campaign to promote the organization and the career possibilities on offer. In general, paid advertisements can either be placed in media used specifically by people actively seeking work or positions in hospitality, or can be placed where passive job seekers might be drawn to consider a switch into the hotel industry.

Bonus suggestion: if you really want to stand out from other employers while attracting and identifying talent, you might like to consider running some kind of competition where the winner is given a role with your hotel. If the competition is based on cooking skills, language skills, or problem solving, it may help you to attract the kind of people you need, while automatically confirming whether they have the necessary ability to succeed.