Will Your Next Hire Come From The Ritz? Executives turn to hospitality and other industries as finding staff becomes increasingly difficult. By Lynette Bertrand, Communications Manager, CACM Crocker said what’s worked best for him is “raising people from inside.” Hiring staff as office or administrative assistants and providing them the opportunity to work toward becoming a community manager. “Anyone who starts at an entry level position has the opportunity to become a manager,” he said. Others have resorted to hiring employees from outside of the industry. Damian Jenkins, President of The Management Trust’s Desert division, has found success hiring staff from the hospitality industry. Over the last year, that industry has laid off large swaths of employees—many of whom haven’t been able to get their job back or are hesitant to go back fearing that a new virus strain may force another shutdown or limit operations and they’ll find themselves out of a job again.
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sk any community management executive what are the top challenges in business today, and you’ll find that hiring and recruiting new staff typically tops that list. “It’s gotten harder to hire,” admitted Rolf Crocker, CAMEx, CCAM, CEO/Principal of OMNI Community Management, LLC, ACMC. “I needed to find a manager for the East Bay region and it took several months to land one, and it was a referral from a vendor. During the pandemic, most folks were plugged in somewhere else.” It’s a comment other executives echoed. Despite posting ads on mainstream job boards as well as industry specific sites, filling community management positions has become a difficult hurdle for many companies who have resorted to different tactics.
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Vision Summer 2021 | cacm.org
Hospitality workers come from a wide array of businesses including hotels, restaurants and bars. Jenkins is well connected to that industry after a lifelong career managing high-end hotels and restaurants before making the jump into the community management industry three years ago. So finding some of the top talent was a bit easier through his established network and posting jobs on hospitality specific job sites. “It’s really working out well for us to hire people who have that hospitality mindset to go above and beyond, first of all for each other as employees, then customers,” Jenkins said. The Desert division is the largest at The Management Trust, employing more than 200 people, mostly because of the number of onsite communities it serves. Many of these hires are filling hospitality roles at country club operations served by The Management Trust. The company recently
