By Mary Tucker, IAEE Senior Communications and Content Manager
Expo! Expo! IAEE’s Annual Meeting & Exhibition 2023 features a three-day educational journey covering seven diverse content tracks, including this impactful session led by Dawn Rasmussen, CMP titled Solving the Hospitality and Exhibition Industry’s Talent Problem. The current landscape of hospitality and related industries is marked by a ubiquitous presence of job vacancies and service delays attributed to workforce shortages. How can companies within these sectors effectively address this pressing issue?
Drawing from her extensive interactions with job seekers, Dawn will offer invaluable insights and practical advice for positioning your organization to attract emerging talents and cultivating a pipeline of proficient industry specialists. Don’t miss this opportunity to gain actionable takeaways that will empower you to proactively tackle your company’s talent challenges.
Here, Dawn shares a preview of how participants will benefit from the information presented at Solving the Hospitality and Exhibition Industry’s Talent Problem.
In this session, you will dive into high-yield strategies to attract high-potential employees to one’s business. How did you determine which tactics are proving most effective in appealing to high-quality talent?
Dawn: As with any marketing, it has to begin with knowing your audience. The audience, in this case, are prospective employees. As Nordstrom’s famous hiring axiom holds true: hire for personality and train on skill, then it is important to understand where the types of potential employees might be congregating. For example, if you are hiring for IT positions, then focusing recruiting on technical colleges might be great to set up a pipeline for new college grads, or conversely, reaching out to a technically job club to source more advanced prospects. You have to be clear on what and who you are hiring, and find the matching conduit to fill those positions.
You will also teach participants how to build a talent brand that creates FOMO in the job marketplace and inspires people to want to work at their company. What makes your approach so effective?
Dawn: Employment/talent brand is critical but if it’s just a statement in a document and not actually in practice, then people see right through that. People want to work for fun employers in empowered work environments that provide employees with autonomy and the necessary tools for them to do their work, while being compensating appropriately, along with clear career pathways.
If any of those pieces are missing, then the talent brand promise is broken. This requires buy-in and 100 percent commitment by company leaders working hand-in-hand with human resources to find ways to give team members leeway while providing the necessary structure so expectations are clearly communicated.
Once that is achieved, then existing employees are going to be incredible talent brand ambassadors helping promote the work experience to prospective team members.
You will also help attendees learn how to avoid talent bleed and build employee retention through simple strategies. What will organization leaders facing this challenge find most surprising about the tactics you will be exploring?
Dawn: Organization leaders frequently forget that the answer is usually already in the room. By talking to employees and getting their feedback on what they want or need is the easiest method to find out where critical gaps reside, as well as things that can be improved or enhanced to make the employee experience even better. This requires asking hard questions, and being prepared to receive sometimes difficult answers, then being willing to change and/or adapt to those insights.
What fuels your passion for this subject, and why is this information so relevant in today’s business environment?
Dawn: I’ve been in the careers space for 16+ years now, and have had the opportunity to speak to thousands of clients about their resumes, jobs, hopes, fears, frustrations, and ideas.
When employees don’t get what they need from an employer, they walk.
When an employer doesn’t get the performance they need out of an employee, the team member gets a pink slip.
Every job is an employment agreement, and with that tacit contract, a balance is struck. When there’s an imbalance, then one or the other party is left wanting.
It is critical that employers and companies understand that complaining about the lack of talent could be a symptom of their own employment brand and an inability to attract people to the company.
And in order to be highly competitive in today’s talent marketplace, companies need to be much, much more proactive in building talent pipelines than being reactive and throwing up their hands when they can’t find qualified people to hire. Having a strategic recruiting plan as part of the organization’s health and evolution needs to go beyond just posting job ads and waiting for applications. To be the best and attract the best, a lot more effort needs to go into forming the employment brand and then executing on it to make it a reality.
