The most dangerous red flags in the job market
"The restaurant is centrally located." The location sounds good, doesn't it? Well, the fact that the highway runs right next to it is only implied. This example is meant to illustrate how powerful language is and how easily we (mistakenly) create or follow false signposts.
Think of phrases like these: "flat hierarchies," "dynamic team," "performance-based pay"—sounds tempting, modern, and appealing in the job posting, right? Wrong. In hospitality recruitment, such phrases can quickly be interpreted as dangerous warning signs, hidden behind seemingly harmless feel-good vocabulary. While slogans like "high resilience required" are immediately seen through, such veiled messages quickly send applicants running for the hills! Because they (all too often quite rightly) suspect red flags.
Let's take the legendary "flat hierarchies." Sounds like equality and co-creation. In practice, it all too often means: no one takes responsibility, schedules descend into chaos, and when problems arise, everyone points the finger at everyone else. Leadership simply doesn't exist. Equally revealing: the "young, dynamic team." Anyone who thinks of freshness and drive here might be overlooking the crucial question: why doesn't anyone over 30 work at this company? Because the business model is possibly based on rapid turnover. Experienced professionals have left, leaving behind a radical fluctuation, which is charmingly sold in the job posting as "dynamism." At least, that's how it's often interpreted. Or the search for the "flexible all-rounder": on paper, the chance to learn a lot. In reality, all too often, it's the expectation that you're supposed to rock service, kitchen, and dishwashing all at once—for a single salary.
The best candidates in the industry have long since developed a keen instinct and quickly detect deceptive advertising. If there's even the slightest hint of something more—whether it exists or not—they'll be out of there in a flash. This doesn't mean we shouldn't have flat hierarchies, that we shouldn't be less dynamic, or that we shouldn't establish interdisciplinary roles. It means we need to be careful with the wording in our job postings, which we hope will be permanently visible thanks to flat-rate advertising. We don't want to inadvertently deter candidates instead of attracting them.
