Everyone is well aware of the hardships that the liquor and hospitality industry, and indeed most of Australia, have been through in what has so far been a devastating 2020.
In New South Wales alone, the Australian Hotels Association said that 94 per cent of hotel and pub workers were stood down as a result of the COVID-19 lockdown. That equated to more 70,400 people either being terminated or stood down because venues were shut.
And that’s just the hotel and pub workers. With venues closed many businesses and suppliers nationally had no option but to close or hibernate their on-premise activities. While completely necessary and understandable after so much business was lost virtually overnight, the implications of this reach high and wide.
Many amazing sales, business development, brand manager, category and marketing positions were lost, and as Amber King, Co-Founder and Director of BrightSide Executive Search points out this could impact the speed of the industry’s recovery.
“So many amazing people lost their jobs or were stood down because of the on-premise lockdown. The concern is whether we will still have the best of the best available as the recovery starts or if they have been lost to other industries,” she said.
To help with this BrightSide has been in regular contact with its clients and candidates and has also been actively signing up candidates so that as companies look to bring people back into the fold they can find high-quality, relevant candidates straight away.
Sue Lauritz, Co-Founder and Director added: “It’s been devastating to watch our industry go through challenging times as venues have been shut down and so many people have lost their jobs.
“During the past few months BrightSide have been keeping in regular contact with, and providing support to our clients and our candidates. We have an incredible network of qualified, high calibre talent with relevant industry experience across all levels of sales and marketing, with many of these candidates being immediately available and open to contract roles.”
BrightSide also mentioned that HR resources are stretched dealing with “covid related” workplace initiatives making it difficult to dedicate the necessary time to the recruitment process. While HR can reach some of the candidates who are readily available and in the market now, it takes time and dedicated resources to map the market thoroughly and access both passive and available talent, not to mention those ‘on hold’ waiting to see what their companies do as the industry recovers. BrightSide has been able to dig deeper during the downtime to ensure the whole market has been benchmarked and that the business is actually hiring the best person for the job, not the first available.
BrightSide prides itself on finding the right person for the right role, but also its understanding of the industry and what clients need and want.
So in addition to its extensive database of high quality candidates, BrightSide is also helping businesses to recover by keeping their costs down and offering flat fees for the recruitment of key roles over the next three months.
King said: “We understand that keeping costs down is critical but also keeping our talent in our industry, getting them back to work and getting businesses up and running is key”
“By putting our standard fees on hold we hope that we can help our clients access great talent who can have an immediate impact in their business and we obviously all want to see our candidates back in work.”
If you are looking for sales and marketing talent or if you have been let go then you should contact BrightSide.
Click here to head to the BrightSide website and contact Amber and Sue.
You can also email amber@brightside.careers or sue@brightside.careers
