Recruitment methods are out of date

The methods used by the restaurant industry to find its staff are out of date, expensive and do not work, claims a leading recruitment agent.

Roddy Watt, chief executive of Berkeley Scott, said restaurants needed to spend more time planning what they wanted from employees if they wanted to lower staff turnover.

But Anne Walker, managing director of Springboard, said that spending time thinking about what you want from an employee was virtually impossible in a busy kitchen if you were one man down.

Walker said a lot of work had been done in the industry to try and improve its retention rates but a lot more still needed to be done.

Watt and Walker were speaking at the Restaurant 2001 conference, which is currently taking place in London.