Two new tech tools streamline hiring

Had it up to here with the quantity and quality of job applicants you get from Craigslist?  Two fledgling tech ventures, jobs site Poachedjobs.com and applicant tracking firm WyckWyre, aim to reduce the avalanche of off-the-mark resumes that clog operator inboxes. Their goal: streamline the needle-in-a-haystack hiring methods many restaurants are now stuck with by default.

Nothing against Craigslist, which definitely delivers on its promise to provide an easy and low-cost way for operators to post job listings in their local markets. The problem is that Craigslist also makes it easy and free for job applicants to reply—so easy that a single restaurant job posting can elicit dozens or hundreds of responses. Restaurant owners and managers who must then sort through the resulting flood of resumes report frustration with the actual number of qualified candidates they find. They say the hiring process takes way more time and energy than it should.

Two new companies have sprouted up to offer online-based restaurant job recruiting alternatives. Both promise to smooth out the employee recruiting process by supplying restaurant owners with fewer, higher-quality job applicants.

One is website www.poachedjobs.com. It’s the brainchild of Portland, OR, restaurateur Peter Bro and his business partner, Kirk Thornby. Poached is restaurant-specific, and many of its 1,000 restaurant customers are clustered in the fine dining segment. To date, Poached lists positions in six cities: Portland, Seattle, Chicago, Austin, San Francisco and New York. The site gets roughly 80,000 visitors a month.

The company pitches itself this way on its website:

“Poached is not just another job board—we offer simple and elegant tools to manage resumes and the hiring process. No need to publish your email address and fill your inbox with a flood of attachments. Simply log in to your account, click your job post and begin flipping through resumes with our Resume Viewer. Rate, sort, filter, download and make notes. We also keep your resumes connected to your jobs so going back and finding that elusive resume is much easier than sifting through a flooded inbox.”

It costs $25 to post a single job on Poached, $179 for 10. Current posters in New York City include such prestigious restaurants as Restaurant Daniel, Primehouse, Marcus Samuelsson’s Red Rooster, Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s Perry Street and others of this stature. Chicago postings come from the likes of Boka Restaurant Group, mk The Restaurant and Vivo. With jobs available at restaurants like these, you can bet ambitious applicants will be all over this site.

Poached still requires hiring managers to screen applicants. WyckWyre (www.wyckwyre.com) does the prescreening for you.

“The need to save time and reduce turnover is imperative in an industry that is so fast-paced,” says Lisa DiVirgilio, WyckWyre’s director of business development.

“Hiring managers want to take advantage of the time they have and only spend it in-person with highly qualified candidates. That’s why heavy pre-screening is so welcomed.” A survey of WyckWyre users found that hiring mangers save between one to four hours finding qualified candidates compared to previous recruiting methods.

Current listings on WyckWyre show jobs from Wendy’s, Popeye’s, Applebee’s, BW3 and several independents. The company’s website offers 1,571 positions as we write. Jobs are available in 24 cities spread across the U.S. The cost to post varies according to the level of service an operator chooses.

If you’re satisfied with the quality and quantity of responses to job posts you place on Craigslist or similar sites, you may not need Poached or WyckWyre. But if you’re not, you may wish to take a look at what they can do for you.