Hospitality jobs, without the shouting

Hospitality hiring mostly happens through a sign in a window, a message in a group chat, or somebody knowing somebody. That works for the places with a network and badly for everybody else.

Finding work

Roles at places near you: kitchen and front of house, across cafés, bars, bakeries and food businesses. Chefs, baristas, bar staff, servers, kitchen porters, managers. Full-time, part-time and casual shifts.

All of it is food. Nothing on here is a warehouse role that mentions catering once.

Applying

You build a profile once and apply with it.

That is the important difference from a general job site, where each application is a form. Hospitality moves quickly and a role that takes four minutes to apply for is a role somebody else got, so the whole thing is built around applying in about one.

Attach a CV if you have one. A lot of good hospitality roles genuinely do not need one, and requiring it filters out people who would have been excellent.

Following places you want to work at

This is the part worth using.

Most people looking for hospitality work have three or four places they would actually like to be — somewhere they have eaten, somewhere with a reputation, somewhere with the right hours. Those places post rarely and fill fast.

Follow them and you are told when they post, instead of finding out from somebody who already got it.

Being told, rather than looking

The realistic version of a job search in hospitality is that nobody has time to check a site every day.

Alerts are built around that. Tell it what you are looking for and where, and you are told when something matching appears — which is the difference between finding a role in the first day it is up and finding it after it is gone.

Combined with following specific places, that covers both halves of how hospitality hiring actually works: the roles you would take anywhere, and the three places you would drop everything for.

You can see what you are walking into

Every place hiring has a page: its food, its photographs, what people think of it.

That is a genuinely unusual thing to have before an interview. You can see whether the kitchen looks like somewhere you would want to work, what it actually serves, and whether it is busy — none of which appears in a job advert, all of which decides whether you take the shift.

Shifts and part-time work

Not every role is a career move, and the listings do not pretend otherwise.

A lot of hospitality work is part-time, seasonal or a few shifts a week — students, people with another job, people who want three evenings. That is normal in this industry rather than a lesser category, and it is filterable, so you are not reading through full-time head chef roles to find a Saturday shift.

Getting a reply

The honest part: a place that is hiring is a place that is busy, and replies take time.

What helps is applying with a profile that is already complete, so the person reading it has what they need in one screen. What helps more is applying early — hospitality roles are frequently filled from the first handful of applications, because somebody suitable turned up and the shift needed covering on Thursday.

What it costs

Nothing, for anybody looking for work. Looking, applying and alerts are all free.

What else to look at

• Courses — training and qualifications for the work
• Ratings — what the place is actually like
• Food guides — where to eat, written up properly
• Lists — keeping track of the places you rate