Finding Top Tasting Room Talent in a Talent Deficit
The root causes of one of the toughest hiring markets in recent memory, and what you can do to solve it
How many of you are struggling to find qualified talent, particularly in the tasting room?
Why is this happening?
According to David Newlin, founder and CEO of Newlin and Associates, an executive recruiting firm, there are four macro factors that are making this a rather tough hiring market: a historically low unemployment level, a generationally driven smaller talent pool, more wine companies chasing that smaller talent pool and companies expecting more from candidates.
The economy experienced positive growth in 2018, leading to one of the United States’ lowest unemployment rates in recent memory. As a result, the recruiting process for most employers, wineries included, has changed from weeding through excessive amounts of resumes in order to find the right candidate, to actively hunting down people with the necessary skills and experience.
It’s a trying task, particularly for smaller employers without dedicated human resources teams, as well as those who operate in regions of the country with astronomically high costs of living (here’s looking at you, Bay Area).
When it comes to management and executive level positions, most wineries are feeling the strain of a smaller Generation X, Newlin said. Baby Boomers, typically the holders of the top positions within a company, are moving into retirement age, leaving a large number of positions open. Millennials, typically referred to as the future replacement for Boomers (whether in consumption, purchasing or, well, pretty much everything else) are not necessarily ready for these top roles—they just haven’t had as many years of experience.
The growth of the wine industry has also become an issue, at least when hiring. With more than 10,000 bonded wineries fighting for the same, small talent pool, potential employees have their pick of the winery they would like to work for. This problem is magnified in the tasting room, where it’s preferable to hire someone who knows a thing or two about the wine they are pouring, while also being a top salesperson. The number of candidates who come into the position with the knowledge at hand is often limited, particularly in regions that are still developing their tourism and direct-to-consumer reputation.
Lastly, Newlin reports that companies are raising the bar when it comes to the level of talent they’re willing to hire. It makes it difficult, he says, to “settle” for a candidate that has potential and is likely good for the job but might need a bit of coaching or training to reach their stride.
“When we’re in a talent deficit period, the first impact we notice is that job seekers have all the power. And they know it, don’t they? They’re negotiating harder. If they know they are sought out, they know they can demand a lot more in terms of compensation and benefits and they’re going to ask you for it, I guarantee it,” he said.
With these factors causing a talent deficit, it doesn’t help matters much to know that 50 percent of hourly new hires quit or are fired within their first six months, according to Humetrics. Overall, 46 percent of all new hires fail within the first 18 months.
So, what is an employer to do?
Change the recruiting process and develop initiatives to retain valuable employees.
The Problem with the Recruiting Process
As Newlin puts it, the recruiting and interviewing process is broken. Many employers are moving along with the same old recruiting processes, tools and questions that they’ve been using for decades. In his mind, no one has ever really thought to re-engineer them.
Newlin has spent the last 30 years in the recruiting world. He’s seen it through recessions and economic booms, and through talent surpluses and deficits. Likewise, Nicole Cummings, director of human resources at Cakebread Cellars, spent a number of years working in HR at Cakebread before taking a few years to work corporate HR at some financial service companies, learning about their methods and recruiting/hiring practices. She then returned to Cakebread Cellars to take on her current role as the HR director.
Following her return to the wine world, Cummings realized that she couldn’t just post a job listing and receive hundreds of qualified applicants, like she did 10 years ago. Instead of being reactive, she put in place proactive measures to ensure the right talent was being brought into the winery. To start, she built up the employer brand.
“I sat down and worked with our marketing team on our employer brand, because we weren’t so good at capturing the people who were following Cakebread or liked the way Cakebread did something,” said Cummings. She wanted to capitalize on brand interest by giving those who had an interest in the company a place to go to learn about the great benefits and culture Cakebread offered.
Cummings built a Careers page on the Cakebread website, hosted through the Winejobs.com Application Tracking System, as a way to capture the interest of anyone who engaged with the brand via the company site, even if looking up the location of the tasting room or searching for a wine to buy. [Disclosure: Wine Business Monthly owns and operates winejobs.com]
“If you don’t have a career page, you’ve got to get one. The people who decide they’re going to start looking for a job or the people who decide they might want to work at your company are going to check you out online first,” she said.
According to a Glassdoor-commissioned survey performed by The Harris Poll, 35 percent of job seekers preferred hearing about a new job through a company’s career page. When they start looking for a job, they go to the brands and companies they already know and love first.
Cakebread also moved away from traditional job descriptions, because she knew the right candidates cared about bigger questions, like what the company’s employees would say about working for them, what that company does to better themselves and the surrounding community, why the company is a great place to work and what the promotional opportunities are.
“If all you’re using are traditional online job postings and job descriptions, those are mostly going to be appealing only to ‘B’ and ‘C’ players,” said Newlin. “It’s not enough to get access to top performers. You have to do something above and beyond to rely upon those traditional tools.”
To fix this, Newlin offered four suggestions:
• Define the job by using five- to six-year key performance objectives, rather than job descriptions (which he said are just checklists of desired skills and experiences).
• Create interview questions that probe and validate exceptional performances on similar, past assignments.
• Write out an “Ideal Candidate Value Proposition,” which explains why this would be a great opportunity, in order to reach and engage top performers.
• Start out all potential engagements with candidates this way. Don’t save all this information for the second interview.
For Cummings, accessing those top performers means engaging her best network, the one that’s already engaged and ready to serve as her brand ambassador: current employees. She bumped up the employee referral program, offering higher dollar bonuses for promoting employment at the winery.
Other Factors That Increase Applications
The Glassdoor survey also found that 48 percent of workers/job seekers will apply if an employer lists attractive benefits on the job listing, 47 percent respond to a convenient commute and 46 percent will apply if an “attractive salary” is listed.
Other than immediate benefits, the perception of long-term potential of a job is a factor. Glassdoor asked what factors were most important when considering applying for a position and 39 percent said, “information about growth opportunities,” 37 percent said, “knowledge of company promoting from within” and 35 percent said, “positive sentiments in employee reviews.”
According to Newlin, top performers care about two criteria before compensation, benefits or title: what they will be challenged to do in the first year, and how their career will be in a better place three to five years in the future if they join a new company.
To reflect this, Cummings made one addition to the questions she asked when hiring for top talent: What is it you’re looking for in your next position?
“Most people don’t say ‘You know, I really want to get to know your POS system,’ right? They’re looking for challenges, they’re looking for growth and development.”
Retention and the Compensation Conundrum
Two years seems to be the average employment span of a tasting room employee. For those wineries that would love to retain their employees for longer periods of time, there are ways to create better brand loyalty—and it starts with taking a look at compensation culture.
“Employees want to like your culture and they don’t want to feel like they’re being treated wrongly,” said Cummings. “It’s an expensive place to live and, at the end of the day, employees still have bills to pay and financial obligations. If the winery next door is offering tip lines or commissions and you’re not, they may make that move simply because they can make a few more bucks at that winery.”
Thinking about earnings as a retention strategy takes more than just bumping up pay or benefits, Cummings said. She partnered with Great Places to Work to perform an employee survey in order to establish a baseline of employee satisfaction. From there, she engaged her employees to participate in the process of building a culture and a compensation packaged that would encourage them to remain at Cakebread. Now, she’s looking at metrics to see if the company is delivering on what matters to the employees: Is employee satisfaction going up?
Cummings also looked at it from the company’s perspective: Is our brand awareness going up? How are we doing on the cost of hiring and, more importantly, how are we doing on the quality of the hiring we’ve done?
Having the opportunity for growth or promotion turned out to be huge for her employees, and so Cummings developed a system to match. She uses a Nine Box Talent Assessment Tool (see page 125) which helps managers evaluate leadership potential and performance contribution in order to pick out those who have the ability, aspiration and engagement necessary to grow within.
“People are beginning to know some of the things that we’re doing with our high-potential talent,” she said. “We don’t necessarily have to employ David [Newlin] for all of the positions that we have open. We can grow that talent within our organization. We can communicate with them where our talent time lines exist.”
From there, she encourages her managers to guide employees by matching their skills and interests with opportunities, have frequent communication about performance and development, coach as often as possible, and implement individual development plans.
Individual development plans, she said, are an essential tool to help employees grow their careers and personal advancement. They are designed to guide them toward short- and long-term goals and better job performance and, most importantly, are incredibly helpful in making an employee feel like a valued member of the team whose needs and interests are being met.
Cummings suggested other methods to help employees develop their skills as well: rotational assignments, so they can learn more about winemaking or grape-growing in addition to tasting room requirements; special projects or action learning; supplemental readings; speaker forums; paid days to attend conferences; and, most importantly, details and mentoring from current senior leaders.
Wise Words
“Duct tape is not a hiring strategy and hope is not a plan,” said Newlin. For those recruiters and employers who take active steps to reframe their hiring strategy and actively seek out top talent, Newlin said they will find success. Waiting for a solution to fall into your lap, however, will not.
This article originally appeared in the May 2019 issue of Wine Business Monthly.