Post Jobs For Free On Sirvo

Post Jobs For Free On Sirvo

by | Jan 22, 2016 | Sirvo Stories

Post your company’s jobs on Sirvo free for a limited time.

Sirvo is not your typical job board. We not only provide businesses with the tools to make better hiring decisions without wasting precious resources, but also do more to make sure applicants keep coming to you. Take advantage by creating your free business profile today! Offer expires Feb 10th, 2016!

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Our Features

Business Pages

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Businesses on Sirvo have business pages where information and current openings are listed. A business’s page is essentially their hosted careers site; the page, as well as the job listings, are accessible to the public, so both users and non-users can discover open positions.

This helps companies increase their reach to job seekers. Businesses can easily advertise their open jobs on the web and social media by sharing their page’s link, and professionals can click on a job to get more information. This means businesses don’t have to worry about their jobs getting buried under an ever-growing list of more recent postings.

Multi-Location and Multi-Admin Functionality

Once a business page is created, the owner can invite additional administrators to help manage the page. Admins can do everything that the owner can besides grant admin privileges. This includes publishing and archiving job listings, reviewing applications, using the applicant tracking system, and messaging. So, whether hiring is done collaboratively or by expertise, it can be a team effort with Sirvo.

Sirvo allows users to create multiple business pages, which is ideal for businesses with several locations. By simply creating a page for each location, businesses are able to delegate hiring responsibilities, post jobs according to location, and give job seekers easy access to location information.

Applicant Tracking System

 

 

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The application process, from applying to reviewing applications, is hassle-free on Sirvo. Job seekers apply in-app with professional profiles that include photos, work history, skills, and interests. Once submitted, applications are delivered straight to the applicant tracking system inbox and sorted by job listing, keeping them organized. Page admins can then review applications and sort candidates based on whether or not they’re in the running.

The ATS not only helps businesses manage applications but also makes it easy to hone in on the most qualified candidates so that when it’s time to make the call on who to hire, there’s confidence that it’s the right choice.

Messaging

Sirvo also provides a messaging hub to centralize communication. Each business page has its own message inbox accessible by all page admins from which messages can be sent and received. This gives employers and job seekers an easy way to get in touch with each other, whether it’s an invitation to interview or a question about a job listing while keeping everyone on the hiring team in the loop.

Added benefits of joining Sirvo

At Sirvo, we know that an easier hiring process is only half the battle. Businesses that are hiring also need to engage job seekers on a broader level. That’s why we send out our e-newsletters advertising your open positions, continually share your openings across our social channels and even post jobs to Craiglist at no additional cost to you!

Register your business today to access all of our great features free for a limited time! Offer expires 02/10/2016

Register your business today →

What people are saying:

“We have had success with applicants that have applied for all of our positions. Since Sirvo is new and hip I feel like it attracts people that are more on brand with our company than other staffing services available.” – Paulina Szafranski, Lotus Concepts

“It’s so convenient!!” – James G., Sirvo User

More questions? Simply email us at [email protected].

Management Hacks: Customer Service

Management Hacks: Customer Service

by | Jan 20, 2016 | Business Toolkit, Management

As a business owner or manager, it’s your job to make sure your customers have positive experiences when they encounter any issues with your company. Whether you run a restaurant, hotel, or software company, you can, and should, provide amazing customer service that will keep customers coming back. To do that, you need to make sure amazing customer service is a top priority.

The importance of customer service

Many believe customer service is hard to quantify because it depends on relationships. That’s actually not the case. The quality of your customer service is directly connected to your company’s bottom-line.

If you have great service, customers are more likely to continue using your company’s services, even if they have to pay more.

In fact, there’s a significant amount of proof that the quality of customer service is often a deciding factor for customers. These are just a few of the stats that show just how important customer service is:

In the end, great customer service can differentiate you from competitors, help you retain customers, and encourage customers to pay premium for your offerings. Plus, if you run a restaurant, customer service ties into the sorts of reviews you get on sites like Yelp, as well.

The breakdown of customer service

No matter the business or team within the business, customer service is made up of the same components: the processes you have in place, the tone you use with customers, the content you provide to help customers, and the measurement of how well you’re doing. Let’s take a look at each.

Utilize processes

Even if you have the best intentions, disorganization ruins customer service. Thankfully, it doesn’t have to. This is where processes come into the picture.

When managing employees and delegating responsibilities that relate to customer service, you need to have processes in play so that your team knows exactly how to interact with customers and handle problems should they arrise. This includes specifying who is responsible for each task, how your staff is held accountable for their duties, the chain of command, and how to proceed when customer service issues come up.

For example, if I’m managing a restaurant’s service staff, I would have a clearly defined process for set-up, service, and take-down, as well as for problem situations. This way, everyone is on the same page about what they’re doing and how to treat customers and their complaints should they have any.

Don’t forget tone

No matter how clear your customer service processes are and how closely they’re followed, if an innapropriate tone (irritated, nonchalant, angry) is used with a customer, nothing else will matter because tone is heard before the actual words. So much so that sometimes it’s the subtleties that make the big difference.

For example, the following two messages say exactly the same thing, but vary greatly in how they come across:

Tone 1: Dear Sir, thank you for your inquiry. You will receive a message from us shortly.

Tone 2: Yo. Yeah sure. We’ll hit you up.

The latter may not go over so well if the call was in regards to setting up a reservation at a restaurant. The customers are likely to go elsewhere because, from the tone, they pervieced there would be no follow up.

Instruct your staff on how to speak to different types of customers and in varying situations. This will ensure that the message is being heard as it should.

Measure success with sentiment

Customer service isn’t any good if you’re not measuring it. You need to know whether or not it’s working, and if it isn’t, what needs to change. This can only be done with feedback. At all times, you need to be checking in to make sure that your staff is performing well and that your customers are happy with the service they’re getting.

There are a number of ways you can do this:

  • Speak to customers while they’re in house. Walking around tables and asking how everything is going can be a good starting point.
  • Collect customer surveys using survey cards or by way of a digital platfrom such as Survey Monkey. To increase response rate, try including an incentive for giving feedback.
  • Look to Yelp reviews, Google reviews, Angie’s List reviews, and other review sites.

Amazing customer service can make all the difference. Great service is about a lot more than business– it’s about fostering relationships with your customers that are long-lasting and mutually beneficial. As a leader within the business, it’s your job to make sure your company is doing all it can to provides experiences that delights your customers, exceeding their expectations with every interaction.

Find out more about customer service →

Top Beverage Trends for 2016

Top Beverage Trends for 2016

by | Jan 18, 2016 | IndiNews

When it comes to beverages, 2015 was all about craft. In 2016, it’s going a step further to in-house distillation, plus culinary and cocktails will find more common ground, and whisky will longer hold the spirit crown.

1. Nitro Coffee

Coffee’s next iteration, nitro coffee—a cold brew that’s been injected with nitrogen, improving the mouthfeel and drinkability of cold coffee—is being incorporated into alcoholic and non-alcoholic coffee drinks. Nitro tap systems are available for restaurants and coffee shops. The coffee bar at Beatrix from Lettuce Entertain You serves up Caramel Cream Nitro, made with cold brew nitro, house-made caramel, whipped cream and sugar (yum).

2. Creative Gin Drinks

Bartenders are getting creative with classic gin-based drinks—martinis and gin and tonics—using gins aged in whiskey, brandy or rum barrels and infused with the tastes of botanicals or sweetened with hints of vanilla, maple or brown sugar.

 3. Locally Produced Beer/Wine/Spirits

A recent trend has emerged of restaurants showcasing beverages produced either in-store or locally. One such example is Denver’s Mile High Spirits, a private label micro-distillery, cocktail lounge and tasting room. The emphasis on locally-produced drinks aims to promote and publicize the efforts of lesser-known breweries and vineyards while offering a unique, home-grown pairing with local food.

4. On-Site Barrel-Aged Spirits

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Aging cocktails and spirits in barrels can add a new level of flavor to your drink and soften the harshness of alcohol. Recently, restaurants and bars have been buying their own barrels to age their cocktails/spirits in the store. This is the case at local Denver restaurant La Loma where they age their whiskey in an oak barrel for a few months before serving.

5. Culinary Cocktails

Culinary Cocktails is about looking forward. Many of today’s great chefs are pushing the envelope of cuisine by using fresh ingredients and modern techniques to create attractive, delicious, and stunningly innovative drinks. It doesn’t just stop at chefs though as at-home mixologists are moving this trend into the everyday.

6. Regional Signature Cocktails

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The trend of localism is spreading throughout the United States and the same rings true for the restaurant industry. Although you may not know it, most states have their own signature cocktail, typically catering to their specific food profiles. For instance, the Smoked Salmon Bloody Mary uses local Alaska Distillery’s smoked-salmon vodka, highlighting the state’s uniqueness and love for salmon. Regional cocktails add a whole new approach to dining and drinking around the U.S.

7. Shrubs and the Tart Cocktail

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When it comes to flavor, fermented foods have been a hit with diners in 2015. From kimchi to the at-home pickling phenomenon, tart flavors have found fans in adventurous and health-conscious eaters. As culinary cocktails become more prevalent (see above), look for this food trend to extend to cocktails in the form of shrubs in 2016. What’s a shrub? It’s a colonial American method of using vinegar to preserve fruit. and will be applied to cocktails as a new way to mix tart drinks. Shrubs fit all the criteria for a trend-worthy concoction: bold flavor, house-made, and reflects the desire for our vices to become a bit healthier.

8. Tap Takeover in Restaurants

Restaurants are becoming more innovative and focused on their beverage programs as a whole, including cocktails. As popularity and familiarity with pre-batch cocktails grow, look for these batches to leap from the bottle to the tap. Restaurants will begin to offer more cocktails on tap to better suit their service demands. On tap cocktails will be especially efficient for restaurants as they begin to sell more complex drinks because timing is so important in a restaurant.

10. Rum Cocktails and Sipping Rums

Tiki bars have brought rum back to the mainstream. They’ve helped elevate rum cocktails from the purgatory of vacation indulgence or captain-and-coke puerility and shown just how varied cocktails made with the sugar cane spirit can be. As the taste for regional flavors grows, look to see rum on the rise. Rum should undergo a similar arc as whiskey did during its (continuing) boom which means we’ll soon see bar patrons began ordering the spirit neat.

Cheers!

Want more? Find out food trends for 2016 →

Calculating Actual & Theoretical Food Costs

Calculating Actual & Theoretical Food Costs

by | Jan 15, 2016 | Business Toolkit, Management

Controlling food costs is integral to running a profitable restaurant. At its heart lies the challenge of balancing the (rather) static cost of the item displayed on the menu with the daily variations in cost for its ingredients. To ensure this, restaurant operators and managers must think of food cost as a performance metric; by comparing actual food costs to theoretical costs over time, restaurants can maintain profitability.

Food Costs As A Performance Metric

To gauge how well a restaurant is managing its food costs, you must first understand what a restaurant’s Theoretical Food Costs are, based on current inventory costs of all ingredients for the meals sold, and assuming perfect portions, no breakage and no shrinkage. Once the restaurant’s Theoretical Food Cost is known, you can then compare it to their Actual Food Cost, which is simply the actual cost of all the food that the restaurant used for a given period.

The difference between the two is the true measure of efficiency in food cost control; it’s called the Actual vs. Theoretical Variance and reducing it to its lowest possible point is the goal.

How To Calculate Theoretical Food Costs

Theoretical Food Cost is what your food cost should be in an ideal world with perfect portions and no breakage, waste, or shrinkage reported as a percentage of Total Food Sales. To calculate it, you need the following information:

  • Food Cost for each menu item, calculated with a very accurate tally of the quantity and cost of each ingredient that goes into each menu item, including any ‘paper costs’ such as napkins, wrappers, and bags.
  • Units Sold for the period for each item, which should be easily exportable from your Point of Sale system.
  • Total Food Sales for the period, in dollars.

Theoretical Food Cost (%) =

[ ( item A Food Cost × item A Units Sold ) + ( item B Food Cost × item B Units Sold ) + ..] / Total Food Sales × 100

Because each restaurant has so many items sold and so many ingredients for each item, this is a very difficult calculation to do manually. If your sales data is synced with your inventory system, this is likely a report that can be run with no manual intervention. Ideally it is run every time you calculate your Actual Food Cost.

How To Calculate Actual Food Costs

Actual Food Cost, also reported as a percentage of total sales, is a measure of how much your food cost truly is. It’s a straight-forward calculation, but it relies on taking careful and regular inventory counts. The formula for Actual Food Cost requires the following information:

  • Beginning inventory, or the total cost of inventory at the beginning of the period. It’s important to note that if the cost of something has changed, it’s best practice to use the most recent unit cost.
  • New inventory purchased, or the total cost of inventory purchased throughout the period.
  • Ending inventory, or the total cost of inventory left unused at the end of the period.
  • Total Food Sales for the period, in dollars.

Actual Food Cost (%) =

 [ ( Beginning Inventory + New Inventory Purchased ) – Ending Inventory ] / Total Food Sales × 100

How To Calculate Actual vs. Theoretical Variance

This is the measure of efficiency in controlling food costs; the result tells you how closely the restaurant’s Actual Food Cost was to their Theoretical Food Cost.

Actual vs. Theoretical Variance =

Actual Food Cost – Theoretical Food Cost

Although Theoretical and Actual Food Costs will never match, meaning your variance will never be 0, what you are looking for are trends when the divergence is increasing or when there are sudden changes. These changes are a signal to investigate the cause of the discrepancy.

The most common cause of increased variance (and higher than desired food costs) is inaccurate inventory. To reduce error, follow inventory management best practices. Another possibility is that you are wasting a lot of food. This may be due to inefficient portioning, spoilage, employee theft or error. The other, much more concerning, possibility is that the cost of what you are selling is out of line with what you are charging. Most often, this is because prices on the menu have not been updated to reflect increasing food costs.

Management Hacks: Business Operations

Management Hacks: Business Operations

by | Jan 13, 2016 | Business Toolkit, Management

As a manager, in a restaurant or otherwise, it is your responsibility to ensure that business is running smoothly. This ranges from how staff is performing to business outcomes. It can be a heavy load. However, there are still many easy and inexpensive things you can do to make sure your establishment is running the way it should and to prevent problems before they occur.

Get involved

No one thinks of the phrase “absentee boss” in a positive context. Being in the establishment is a good start, but you need to get out of your office and on the floor and in the kitchen.

Be seen.

Even if the general manager and/or owner are not, you can be. In fact, putting in the effort to be available to your staff and customers will help you in the end. Employees will respect you all the more, making your job that much easier.

Drop in unexpectedly

When I was working in the industry, my manager would pop in and out all the time. She would tell us that she had an appointment the next morning and was coming in late, then show up early and say that the appointment was rescheduled. After I moved on, she let me in on her little secret and explained that it was her way of keeping everyone on top of their game. And it worked.

The first few times you do this though, it may catch a few off guard. Give them some slack the first few times, but if they don’t shape up, you’ll know and can then do something about it.

Stop by after hours

You know those restaurant ‘spy’ shows where they go undercover to find out who’s behind the business’s shortages? Well, one of the recurring things on those programs is that abuses are happening after hours; bartenders are throwing parties, chefs are using your place for a pop-up restaurant, etc. Well, even though those shows are overdramatized, they’re not off the ball.

To ensure this is not happening at your business, especially if you’ve noticed something suspicious, go in when the place is closed, and do it often. For many restaurants, a drive by will suffice. No lights on and no parked cars are both good signs when the place is supposed to be closed. A similar tactic is to check with your alarm company to see when the alarm was turned on and turned off.

Hire an experienced person for the role of mystery shopper

Again, those ‘spy’ tv shows are on to something here.Using a mystery shopper can help uncover that which you would not discover otherwise. This can be anything from poor service and inconsistencies in food/beverages to comps, and more.

It’s best if your mystery shopper is experienced in restaurant and hospitality operations and someone you’re familiar with, but you’re employees are not.

Also, having your mystery shopper visit regularly will allow him or her to form relationships with your staff, increasing access to what’s going on behind the scenes.

Do an accurate inventory, and do it often

Whether you’re responsible for both food and beverages, or just one or the other, don’t just do an inventory on one time of item or before placing weekly orders. If possible, aim to do a thorough inventory 2-3 times per week. While inventory should always be done when the business is closed, don’t do it on the same days every week.

This is a lot to take on, but there are tools that can help. It’ll be worth it in the end; you’ll not only be protecting the business from unnecessary spending but also ensuring that business operations are running as they should.

Rotate staff between units and shifts

The more comfortable staff is with each other the more likely they will get together to do things that should not be done. This is a tough tightrope to walk.

You need to have people together enough that they work smoothly with each other, but not consistent enough to become overly friendly.

The side benefit of this is that everyone starts knowing how to work with everyone else, which is a plus if you have to switch around people for special events, staffing shortages, etc.

The bottom line is that there are several small steps that you can take to tighten up business operations and ensure that everything is being run as it should be.

Need some tools? Check out Management Hacks: Business Toolkit →