Can we open our own restaurant by studying hotel management?

Obviously you can, lots of people do . . . but without specific knowledge, skills and ability in the management of a food and beverage operation, you're adding a great deal of risk to what is already a risky venture. 80 to 90% of independent, non-franchised restaurants fail within the first two years.

I've actually heard human resources people talk as though middle management is middle management — if you can run a hotel, then obviously you can run a restaurant; if you can run a convenience store, then obviously you can run a movie theater; if you can manage a daycare then obviously you can run a hotel — and I've always wondered how such genius evolved on earth.

I've managed hotels for years. I've managed motion picture theaters for some 15 years in addition to that, and there isn't that much about running theaters that qualified me to manage a hotel. Even the art and science of supervision is different: with theaters, you use minimum wage teenagers; with hotels, you employ adults who have to make a living on what you pay them, who are more likely to question the legitimacy of any authority you try to assert, and with whom you cannot deal so arbitrarily. Supervising kids truly is ‘kid stuff’ (bad pun) by contrast to supervising adults. Things we associate with “management” — organizing ability, hiring, training, staffing, discipline and supervision; vigilance, marketing ability, troubleshooting and problem solving, recordkeeping, overall responsibility and accountability — are all together just one part of the required skill set; and many of those parts aren’t doable without some specific subject matter expertise. If you don't know what you're trying to manage, there's a very low limit to how well you can manage it.

How to identify a toxic culture before accepting a job offer

From Fast Company

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What is the difference between a 'guest relations officer' and a 'guest service provider' in a five star hotel?

Ask the hotel chain who has those titles posted on their job board.

Employers define their needs, they divide up the work that needs doing to meet those needs into individual jobs, they define those jobs and the accountabilities that go with each . . . and they dream up the titles for them. And you do have some very dreamy people in this business.

That's why W Hotels is always looking for “Go anywhere, do anything” people -- that's an actual job title. This past month, a Hilton Garden Inn near where I live was advertising for “Happy Morning People” to serve breakfast. A desk clerk can be a “guest services agent”, a “guest services representative”, a “host” or “hostess” (a breakfast server can also be a “host” or “hostess”), the list goes on and it's not standardized for every hotel. Even Walmart refers to its employees as “associates”, as though being a low paid hourly “associate” at a high-pressure job adds dignity to it when you have to apply for food stamps to feed your kids because you can't do it on what they pay you.

How do I plan my career path to become a CEO of a Fortune 500 hotel chain?

Wrong question.

If you insist, you'd have to ask Marriott, Hilton or Hyatt -- those are the only hotel chains on the Fortune 500. (Actually there are four, but Starwood has been bought out by Marriott.) Accor didn't make it. Somehow, IHG, the owner of Holiday Inns, didn't, either. (Of course, I could learn more about Fortune’s methodology, but I don’t bother because I don’t pay that much attention to the Fortune 500.) Companies like Las Vegas Sands and MGM Resorts made it, but they're in the casino business, not the hotel business.

A better question would be, what would you do as CEO of one of those companies if you had the job? It’s a question that every applicant for any accountability in my company, especially that of a hotel manager, gets asked and I’d better like their answer — what would you do with this job if I gave it to you? What would you do with this hotel if I put you in as g.m.?

Because once you've settled on a good answer to the question, what would you do as CEO of one of those companies if you had the job? (and of course, will they like your answer? — don’t forget that part), two things happen.

Can I work in hospitality without a hotel degree?

I do, and I don’t have a hotel degree. (Mine’s in architectural technology, from a two-year comm-tech program. I’m a drafter by trade. When I completed the program, none of the area architects were hiring, so I ended up with a job as a night auditor in a hotel at the then-not-much-more-than-minimum-wage of $4.00 per hour, but it all worked out . . . )

If you want to run a really upscale, specialized, or complex property — a big box Hilton or Marriott with food, beverage and meeting space; a luxury property or resort — a degree in hotel administration or a specialized hospitality field is very helpful.

But much of it is going to be wasted on a select service or economy property, and that is where most people who are employed in hotels work.

It’s also the only kind of hotel we manage. We have, in one location, a Hotel RL in development. (We like the concept, so if it performs well, and running it and having it bring in enough revenue to keep the bills paid doesn’t drive us nuts, we may do more, because it looks like something that would be a particularly fun hotel to run). That one hotel will have about the most complexity — the food and beverage operation, ‘The Living Stage’, the meeting space — that we have any plans to deal with in the foreseeable future in any of our hotels.

Michael Forrest Jones' answer to How do you get into hotel management?

Michael Forrest Jones' answer to What is a smart answer to "Why should I choose you over the other candidates"?

Originally appeared on Quora

When an employee threatens to resign and uses it as a negotiating tool, what is the ideal response from HR managers or company management?

"There's the freakin' door . . . It's even got a backlighted sign mounted over it telling you in simple, one-step instructions exactly what you can do with it."

If someone has a legitimate (or at least respectable) grievance, or reasonable provocation, I can see them getting a little wound up. In that event, they really shouldn't have to make the threat: it could be, they're just getting emotional . . .



But as a negotiating tool?  Don't let the door hit you where Mother Nature split you. 

If they even make the attempt (in the form of a threat, rather than just describing an option if they do happen to have prospects elsewhere), it's highly questionable whether they need to be working there to begin with. I once had an employment lawyer share with me that, in every single case of employment-related litigation that crossed his desk it invariably developed, once all the potential witnesses are interviewed and discovery is completed, that the employment situation with that particular employee had broken down long ago and had not been working out for either the employer or the employee for quite some time. Whatever actually precipitated the termination, or the angry resignation, and the ensuing lawsuit was merely the catalyst, the 'final straw'. 

To what extent are "wanting to do the job", and "caring about the job and the boss/coworkers" important as "qualifications"?

“Qualifications” don’t exist in real life. Qualifications are whatever, whoever is doing the qualifying, says the qualifications are. They're all made up; and much of the time, they even make them up as they go along.

For many, many years when I was younger, I had a problem with that one, too (and still do, sometimes); but that’s just about the size of it. In this world, no one's ever been able to come up with a better way to do it that actually works.

Even when there’s a job description (which we don’t believe in, and don’t do), and written parameters established by company policy to go by, the person making the choice is the person making the choice. Even if we wanted to, we couldn’t reduce it to something that would leave an individual with only one option, unless our requirements were so rigid that they would be self-defeating (Qualification problem - Wikipedia).

First jobs, and inauspicious (however fortunately inconspicuous) beginnings . . .

Inspired by an article by Larry Mogelonsky at HOTELSMag.com
(Screenshot appears at bottom...)
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My own first job in a hotel was working for a group of drug traffickers, who were using a pair of Durham, N. C. hotels as a money laundering operation.

I am not making this up.

After I left that job, I was actually questioned by North Carolina Alcohol Law Enforcement (NCDPS - Alcohol Law Enforcement ) about their activities, told the ALE guys everything I knew (which amounted to . . . nothing at all other than that my former employers were people of highly questionable character, reputation, and wisdom - although by then, I wouldn't have put it past them at all to be involved in something like that, which was a big part of why I'd moved on to another job . . .). I then shared what I found out from the ALE guys with my former g.m. (we were still friends, and I was confident she wouldn't be involved in anything illegal); and while at first she didn't believe a word of it (she knew I didn't think too much of the company's 'owners'), I later learned from her, right after she resigned abruptly from that company, that I 'was right about them all along'.

The 400 in its younger days, as Durham's original Holiday Inn.

And I had been fixed up with that job by a Durham city councilman.

How do you get into hotel management?

Start as a night auditor; preferably in the largest full-service hotel, with the most food-and-beverage, meeting and banquet, lounge and gift shop operations on premises, that you can get to hire you.

It's actually a pretty easy job to get as far as hotel front-office jobs go - the hours are crap. It runs in most properties at 11 at night to 7 in the morning, (and no, it can't be done in the daytime), which is why the demand exceeds supply when the economy is good and jobs are plentiful, and why supply doesn't exceed demand by much when jobs are scarce and you see more people competing for any job they can get (including hotel night audit jobs with crappy hours). You don't want to be there forever, but as you yourself pointed out, you're there to learn.

That's where you learn how the numbers go together and what affects them, essential know-how for the management of any business.

Pay attention to what you're doing in that job. Back in the day, experience was a plus, but if you brought along sufficient accounting skills to balance your checkbook the old fashioned way (using the form printed on the back of your bank statement, making the entries and doing the math; rather than just checking your balance online), you could be trained - balancing accounts, after all, is most of what the job of night audit is about. (Most business get audited by their accountants every quarter. Hotels are unique in that they get audited every night.)  Nowadays, nearly all hotels have computerized front desk management systems; so to too many hire-for-personality-and-train-for-ability hotel 'administrators' and the people they insist on hiring, the job consists mostly of going down a list of reports to be printed, and printing out, and collating and routing, several stacks of reports. If it wasn't for the fact that it's necessary to do a bucket check and confirm the rates of all your guests, and make sure your cash and credit card totals balance (as well as your restaurant and banquet checks if it's a full-service hotel), a trained monkey or service animal could do it. 

What should be the penalty when an employee steals items from the company they work for?

The supreme penalty. Termination. Prosecution, if it doesn't cost you too much more than you caught him stealing (by the time you catch a thief, there's usually more than you know about or can know about with any certainty, anyway). Block the unemployment compensation if you can. Permanent ineligibility for rehire. Be completely candid about what happened on any future reference checks. Sue to recover what he stole. And if you're in an Islamic country that provides such a penalty at law, have his right hand cut off at the wrist. The Mob has a solution that's by golly 100% effective, but it has its drawbacks: in a more civilized society, there has to be limits. (And besides, it's risky. And if you go to them for a favor like that, they'll over time want more in return than it'd be worth.) Stick it to him, sideways; give it a few turns, and make it hurt for a long, long time. And anyone who knew about it and didn't report it is just as guilty as the perpetrator: do it to them, too.



If it becomes known to your other employees that someone got away with stealing - or even if others on your staff feels that the penalty was light enough to raise questions about just how seriously you take such a thing, or to make the risk of getting caught worth taking because the downside seems 'minimal' - you'll sooner or later have more problems. You need to make an example of any individual you catch stealing.

What's the best way to show my appreciation for a hotel desk clerk that routinely upgrades me to a suite, free of charge? (I stay at a specific hotel regularly and the desk has the option to upgrade my room. They do it almost every time at no charge. I don't think it's a corporate policy to upgrade regulars; the clerks pick and choose the upgrades based on personal discretion. What's a good way to "tip" them?)

Whatever you feel might be a fair amount of severance pay for the clerk, if it happens in my barn and I find out about it later. Or at least enough to compensate him or her for the written warning and the several days off he or she is going to get -- if the clerk is new and inexperienced, and I think he or she might be salvageable with a better understanding of how the business works and the occasional issues of ethics involved, and he or she still has a job there at all.

Upgraded and upscale rooms are priced a little higher for a reason.

We give out upgrades (Shoot, we do that more often than we rent the rooms at the full, upgraded rate.) We give out discounts. (Sometimes, I wonder why we even bother having a regular rate: see Michael Forrest Jones' answer to What is and why do hotels have a rack rate? ). But when we do, that's always done for a reason: it has to benefit the hotel in some way. An upgrade or a discount is, when given, the hotel's gift to give, not the clerk's. The clerk is only - or at least only supposed to be - acting on behalf of and in the interests of the hotel.

As a newly appointed manager at a store with mainly college students as employees (I myself am 22), how do I assert my new authority without the transition being too harsh or uncomfortable for all involved?

Don't worry about your authority. Your only concern is getting the job done. Okay, you have this store to run, you have these (however many) people to help . . .



Stay focused on objectives, not your 'position'. Everyone can buy into objectives. No one cares, or wants to care, about anyone's position. You can walk on water without getting your feet wet and still have people not wanting to buy into your 'position' . . .

Originally appeared on Quora

What are the smartest questions ever asked by job applicants to potential employers during job interviews?

"How much can you tell me about what the person who had this job before, who I would be replacing, was like?" 

And I'd ask this question as early on in the process as I could get it in without sounding too aggressive or intrusive, even before the interview if I could find a way to do it. 



One thing I noticed some time ago - and when I noticed it, I noticed that I do it myself when hiring a replacement for someone - is a tendency we all have, when replacing someone, to get someone that's different in at least one, and probably several, ways from the previous person holding that accountability. 

After an interview, do potential employers send out rejections first or give out offers first?

We don't reject anyone.

If (for example) Son of Sam (David Berkowitz ) got out of prison and showed up looking for a job, we'd politely take his application and file it; and it would then sit in that file for sixty days, then probably get tossed (in accordance with our policy, spelled out clearly on the form that Son of Sam filled out and signed off on, that that's how long we keep applications on file). In the meanwhile, of course, chances are that Son of Sam's application wouldn't be acted upon beyond the point of his having submitted it and our having filed it, since -- if we're accepting applications at all and a staffing need comes up -- we've usually gotten at least one application from someone who isn't Son of Sam.

(Of course, in the interest of 'equal opportunity', we take care to do that with any job application that's been around for sixty days, even some that are viable, even a few from people that we'd like to have been able to hire; if we did not have a staffing need in the meanwhile for which one of the applicants would have been a good match. Chances are, with hourly jobs, any application that's more than three weeks old was submitted by someone who has since moved on and found another job, if for no better reason than he or she had to, and couldn't sit around and wait for us to get our mess together and make a decision.)

But we're not looking to reject or to 'discriminate' against Son of Sam - or anyone else. We're looking for the person who is the best match for the job. We're not going to reject people, one by one, until we find that person. We're going to go through the pile, choose several on the basis of what we feel are the likelihood that they will be that person, and continue with the screening and selection process.

Entrepreneurs: Can I make it without business school?

Probably, but if you're at that age and you have the option, go. 

I wish I'd had the option. In my current line of work, my biggest weakness is my lack of ability to raise capital (Michael Forrest Jones' answer to Is there back and forth when you put company profile on AngelList or Gust? ). 



But it's not just about me building hotels . . . I could have produced movies, built shopping centers, built sports arenas . . . but whatever great thing you want to achieve (even finding a cure for AIDS, or implementing a plan for making E-85 fuel mainstream in America and using sugar cane-based alcohol and decreasing our dependence on oil); if you don't have the money in your pocket, you have to get it financed. And you have to know how.  

Even if you didn't know how to carry out the AIDS research, or mix up the fuel, you can always find someone who does and bankroll the project. Business and finance can get you into everything else.

If I were putting a kid through school who wasn't sure what to do with his life (and who had no particular STEM talent), I'd encourage business school over liberal arts any day of the week.

Originally appeared on Quora

Do employers take the University of Phoenix seriously when considering an applicant's resume?

I do and I don't.

I think the University of Phoenix is one step above a scam, its courses are overpriced (I'm assuming here that they're roughly equivalent to accredited college courses available at your local comm-tech, and not 'courses' of questionable value), its accreditation certainly didn't come from the same regional accreditation agency that accredited Harvard and MIT, and I automatically question the value of any product that is far and away too reliant on aggressive sales and marketing done the way the University of Phoenix does it. (Like many sellers of big-ticket items which some might wonder if they're worth what you're being asked to spend; if they get your e-mail address, plan on some daily spam in your inbox; if they get your phone number, plan on getting repeated calls until you scream at them to not call you again, or -- more likely -- block them...)

On the other hand, I think even reputable, accredited, conventional colleges and universities have for the last 50 or so years become such a money racket that, if the Mob isn't mixed up in it, it's only because they missed what could have been the biggest opportunity for themselves since Prohibition and the illegallization of drugs. Higher education is something people have to have, and conventional, accredited colleges and universities abuse the privilege. Tuition is high (there's no way you're going to convince me that it bears any relation to the institution's actual costs, and that there isn't a lot of waste built in), the fees never end, the price of the textbooks is exorbitant - and this was all true when I was in college thirty years ago.

Now it's much worse, and the prevailing student debt burden is now a national scandal. Why shouldn't it be? The institutions know you have to have higher education, so they can name their price, have you fill out a financial aid form, clean out your pockets, clean out your parents' bank accounts, pocket the proceeds from a second mortgage on Mom and Dad's house, load you down with more student debt than would pay for a new home of your own regardless of your eventual income after you graduate - and bill the government for the rest. I wish I could rent hotel rooms to people at such prices and on such terms.

Is backstabbing a fundamental part of capitalism? (It seems that "The 48 Laws of Power" are a very effective set of tools that most mediocre minded people follow to dishonorable success, is this true? Are only a small percentage of entrepreneurs fair?)

I haven't read the book and can't comment on it. And I really can't say what percentage of entrepreneurs can be described as 'fair', because I try to deal only with those who are fair to me, deal only if I have to with those who aren't (and watch them), and don't keep a count.

But let me share a secret with you. Capitalism is about making money, by either creating and offering something of value that people are willing to pay for, or by connecting people and setting up trade in a more efficient way that the participants are willing to pay for. It's not about power. It's not about manipulation, domination, and control. It's not about getting into bitch fights with other companies (particularly competitors) or your co-workers at the office, and 'ruining' them or 'destroying' them, as depicted on the Dallas TV series from the '80's (the J. R. Ewing character was quite the poster child for that) and several other sitcoms that have come and gone on prime time since. (Yes, I said 'sitcoms'. Well, I got a good laugh out of some of the stuff that happens in them.). It's not about politics, and it's certainly not about crappy politics, brownnosing and backstabbing. You see stuff like that frequently. But it's not what capitalism, or 'advancing in your career' if you're an 'intermural' player, is all about.

What book should I read to learn about hotel management?

Hopefully, more than one book. 

No single person, not even I, knows enough about it to tell you everything you'd want to know. It's like asking what book you'd read to become a good automobile mechanic. Or what book would you read to beat the stock market (I picked up one a few months back about just how impossible it is to do that, or for anyone in government to regulate it without doing more harm than good, for that matter, because while everyone has little bits and pieces of information and understanding of it, no one knows enough about the whole of it to do it successfully: The Myth of the Rational Market: A History of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street: Justin Fox: 9780060599034: Amazon.com: Books   ).

And if hotel management is something you want to get in to, you'll want to be the kind of guy who'll add something, make a contribution, of your own if you're going to build something that'll stand out from the general lot of them - otherwise, at best, you can hope to be just another guy running just another Hampton Inn. You'll also want to be the kind of person who'll walk around, see things, watch things, read through printouts of numbers that most other people would consider quite dry and boring, ask questions (and over time learn to ask the right questions), and make best possible use of the answers. Believe it or not, watching Hotel Impossible on The Travel Channel (http://www.travelchannel.com/tv-... ), and learning to make like Anthony Melchiorri, can help here. I'm a fan of the show, and I'm not ashamed even to admit that I learn things from it.



That said . . . let's start with the basics.  Get the latest copy (or the next-to-the-latest: it's a college text and priced accordingly, and I don't like the margins that college bookstores, and publishers and other retailers of college texts, make on required texts . . .) of  Check-In Check-Out: Managing Hotel Operations (8th Edition): Gary K. Vallen, Jerome J. Vallen: 9780132059671: Amazon.com: Books (there's a 9th edition that was released in 2012, vs. 2008, but it's $110, and the only thing of serious importance that's happened since is a mortgage crisis and real estate crash that affected hotels as badly as residential mortgages; but is irrelevant to operations and management, the topics in which you show an interest and in which no major advances have occurred.)  

If workers are generally happy, why should they be forced to join a union? Aren't right-to-work laws a good thing?

Unions exist in a workplace because a majority of employees, at the time the union was voted in, voted them in. This question presupposes that the union was voted in even though employees were generally happy without one.  

It also presupposes that anyone is forced to join a union.

No one is forced to join a union. But at some workplaces, where a union has been designated by the employees to bargain collectively on their behalf, you must either be part of the union, or allow them to bargain for you in many areas. If you object, seek employment elsewhere: it's part of the terms of working there. 

It's like having to report to a manager or supervisor you dislike, or comply with work rules you find objectionable: you're not 'forced', but if you want to work there, that's what you're going to have to deal with.

"Right-to-work" laws guarantee no one's right to work - indeed they exist, in part, to lock "employment-at-will" in place. Right-to-work laws simply provide that employees may not be required, as a condition of employment, to participate in or pay dues or fees to a labor organization. 

Does "We'll keep your resume on file," really mean anything?

It means your resume will be placed in a folder made of cardstock paper and stored with other items placed in a similar container (or whatever they use for a filing system in that particular office). 



Whether or not that file is ever opened again prior to being purged is an answer to a different question, one that only someone within that office could answer, if they can answer it at all . . .

Me?  I'd keep looking.

Originally appeared on Quora