How To Hire A Bartender For Your Bar

I know that finding an appropriate bartenders for your restaurant or bar is not an easy job at all. If you’re one of the owners of the restaurant or bar that has a problem with the staff in the bar, this text will help you to identify the advantages and disadvantages of your employees. And if you have the ambition to create professional bartender from amateur this article can serve you as your guide for this adventure!
Possible mission or Mission impossible? You will know by the end of this article. Good luck!

Let’s get one thing straight from the start. If you have a good bartender that you trust that means  you have a real treasure. Not having him it means that you have a big problem and that certain “treasure” lefts out.

How to identify and hire a proper bartender ? What qualities to look for in a potential candidates for this job?

Questions That Will Help You to Hire a  Bartender

According to information found at U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistic typical level of education that most workers need to enter this occupation is less then high school. This means that you are dealing mostly with very young people. Here are some tips that will help you to carefully analyze applicants for this job.

Devote equal time and pay attention to each of them. Sometimes it happens that you miss important data about candidates for the job. To prevent this, do not memorize what they said during interview, instead of this,write ! Write down questions and answers to each of them for each candidate individually. In this way, you’ll have a better insights into the profiles of individuals who may be your potential workers and to make a selection of the best of them.

Below is a list with important questions that you can use during interview.

• What is your experience in the hospitality industry ?
• What kind of bars you visit in your free time ?
• Describe the most stressful job you’ve done so far ?
• Do you play any sports ?
• If is a large crowd at the bar, in what order you will serve your guests ?
• Describe the benefits of working in a team and specify your own positive example of teamwork in solving some problem ?
• How would you know that your guest drank too much alcohol?
• How would you act if you have a drunk guest who offend you ?
• Have you ever worked with a professional bartender and whether you are willing to engage in such a training ?

That would be some basic questions that would give you insights in a qualities of your potential bartenders and will help you to get important information about the skills and personalities of your candidates before you hire a bartnder.

How to Test Your Bartenders Easily?

Is your candidate perfect for this job? Make some easy to do tests during interview. Math should be a strong point of your future bartender, same as the possibility to memorize multiple orders at once.Test them! With the help of this little test you will know more about them.

1. Ask your potential candidate to repeat the order you’re going to say. Let your order contains at least seven items including those special orders such as “ice-free” or “coffee with cold milk.”
2. Immediately after this task, give to your candidate a price list and ask them how would they charge this order.

Calculate the time that each candidate needed to successfully finish a task. The accuracy of the response and the required time to come with correct answer should be for sure taken into consideration before you make a final decision about selection of candidates for this responsible job.

Important Characteristics and Skills of Bartenders

Successful bartenders have certain qualities that differ them from unsuccessful bartenders. In fact, the bartender job is very demanding and it would be necessary that this person has specific skills, knowledge, experience and the tendency to this type of work.

You Need a Person With Lot of Energy

Your bartender should be a person who can do a marathon job, long distance runner. This means that he or she has enough physical and mental strength that is not easy to ” spend ” while they do such a demanding tasks.

Speed is one of the qualities that is required for good bartenders. People which you may characterize as “slow” do not fit into this job. You do not want to have ” Gustav” in your bar right? So say goodbye to all cute ” slow motion ” girls and boys. Without speed there is no effectiveness, and that is what we strive for isn’t it ?
Potential candidates who are regularly engaged in some sports activities have vantage. Sport has a positive impact on the physical and mental condition which results with less absence and the best performance of working tasks during the shift .
On the other hand, candidates who smoke cigarettes or consume alcohol and drugs (including beer and marijuana ) will be more susceptible to health problems and frequent absences. Therefore, do not forget to ask candidates about their habits and sports activities during the interview for job.

Communicative Person with Positive Attitude

Bartending can be an ideal job for the right person. For communicative friendly person it represents the perfect blend of fun and profit. If you choose positive friendly person for your barmen this will attract visitors and make them feel welcome, and they will be happy to get back into your restaurant or bar for coffee or glass of wine again.

Communicative person will also easily join to your team in the bar, express his or her opinion, point to potential problems and willingly give some suggestions to solve it. In this way, you will more quickly overcome possible problems and improve overall business.

Skills and Knowledge of Good Bartenders

Dexterity, quickness, multitasking and getting done in a short time requires a good memory and accuracy while respecting the sequence of actions. It seems that the bartender job is very stressful and requires flexibility, calmness and speed in a same time. These are all qualities that we are looking in our future bartender. Sometimes it seems that the task is very difficult, almost impossible, but with good organization and functional teamwork, work will flow seamlessly even for those with less experience. But what kind of the knowledge we are looking for this job?

Knowledge of basic mathematical operations. As the bartender job involves measurement, computation, and operations with money sure that the person who will do this job must be well acquainted with mathematics. The bartender is often cashier which requires working with money, computation and computer skills.