Breaking barriers

[L-R] Ziwa Htun, CD Kotze, Samer Abiad, Marianna Couvaras and Vivek Singh

Caterer Middle East met up with recruitment and F&B industry professionals at the elegant Rive Gauche restaurant in The Address Dubai Marina, to consider the challenges affecting hiring in the region — and how to break through them

TAKING PART

• Ziwa Htun, HR director, Traders Hotel Dubai
• CD Kotze, F&B manager, Al Manzil & Qamardeen Hotels
• Samer Abiad, assistant director of food and beverage, Al Bustan Rotana
• Marianna Couvaras, head of HRD — Middle East and London, The Meat Co
• Vivek Singh, HR director, The Address Dubai Marina

What is the most difficult F&B role to fill?

CD Kotze: I’d say any leadership position. It’s sometimes difficult to find someone who’s aligned with the company values and your values as a leader, who is also going to be able to communicate what you want to achieve on the ground on a daily basis.

Marianna Couvaras: I would agree — a general manager for an outlet is probably the hardest person to recruit, both skills-wise and calibre-wise.

You expect that person to have both front-of-house and back-of-house knowledge, be a good manager, be a good leader, be able to motivate, be able to market the brand and have business acumen on top of all that. So that’s quite a tough role to fill.

Ziwa Htun: Personally I think you can find people to fill most roles, but it’s a difficult task to find people with real talent; people who can really charm a customer, who have a real passion for service.

Because you can bring someone in who sounds good on paper, but when you get them here maybe they don’t have that natural talent or ability, or are simply not suited to the role.

Samer Abiad: I have found it difficult finding speciality chefs, because they are very particular: they have special techniques or skills that you cannot find just anywhere, and nowadays these qualified chefs have a whole world of opportunity open to them.

Vivek Singh: If you go round Dubai, and look in 50 restaurants for a bright, talented restaurant manager, that’s a difficult thing to find too. The young breed of up-and-coming restaurant managers and speciality chefs are mostly working in other parts of the world, Europe and the US, and it’s difficult to get them here.

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Why is that?

Kotze: I think because Dubai’s so transient, it’s difficult for people to build up a strong reputation in such a small amount of time.

Singh: But we are lucky, in the hospitality industry here; we are at least allowed to hire from any part of the world we wish, whereas many countries actually have restrictions about that.

Couvaras: Absolutely — we can source talent from anywhere and we are really lucky in that respect.

It might take longer to get the guys in, and we might have to accommodate them, but each country has its challenges.

Kotze: I think probably the most difficult thing to do is not only find a person, but also to get them to stay; people often come over here with the mindset that there’ll stay for a finite amount of time.

Singh: From an HR perspective I agree that there is attrition — which can be healthy for a business anyway. But many people do not actually leave the region; they change jobs after a couple of years, but stay in the Middle East.

Personally, I think the main issue we all face is that the truly talented people only make up something like the top 1% of applicants — and nowadays there are a lot of us looking for them.