As a hotel employee, you help manage your bustling hotel, you handle guest complaints and requests with poise, and you receive recognition for your dedication to your hotel and frequent guests, yet somehow you’re stuck.
Time has started to slow down, you love your hotel, but you feel you are trapped in your career. You have dedicated your time and energy to your hotel trying everything in your power to make it just that much better. You ask yourself: Why are you stuck in your hotel position, why after all your hard work are you still stuck waiting for your promotion?
All your hard work and dedication will mean nothing if you do not promote yourself as the future leader of your hotel. Why should you, out of all of your colleagues, become a manager at your bustling hotel? Because of your work hard? Because you have dedicated years to your hotel and its guests? Those alone are shaky grounds for a promotion because if you’re doing it, most likely your colleagues are too.
Fear not, one thing that they may not be doing is branding themselves as the leader of their hotel. They too believe that hard work will get them far. Hard work will get them as far as it has gotten you: stuck in the same job, waiting for the golden opportunity to be handed to them.
Read this quick guide to personally brand yourself as a hospitality professional worthy of getting that promotion.
Personal Website
LinkedIn is great for connecting with colleagues and showing the world your skills and previous career history. However, with LinkedIn´s limited functions you can only show a fraction of your potential through your past credentials.
With your own website not only do you gain a little part of the Internet to call your own, but you can show off your skills, previous jobs, and ambitions in more light. Think of it as the virtual resume that you wish you could send to the CEO or HR of your company. You want to show you have the potential to be the next manager, you’re their ticket to improving their hotel, and without you, they are destined to become obsolete.
You can express yourself in as much detail as you can, showing where you have grown from and how you plan on becoming the future of your hotel, besides the typical virtual resume. Showcase your achievements and the extra responsibilities you have taken.
With LinkedIn, you can only brand yourself as who you are. On the contrary, with your own personal website, you can brand yourself as a future manager, the future of your hotel, and most importantly as an eager hospitality professional who is on the verge of getting that life-changing promotion.
Develop your Skills Based on your Credentials
Personal growth is the key to getting your promotion. By developing new skills, taking on extra responsibility, and learning about key management tactics, you can progress and get to where you want to go.
Community centers across the country offer management classes for eager learners. You can also take free or paid online classes for developing your management skills or to add new skills to your resume. For example, if you’re a concierge looking to expand your skills for a promotion to head concierge, you may want to learn skills such as hotel management and employee training and become a certified management trainer or concierge.
Certifications are the best way to prove that you have the credentials and skills to become a manager. If you find a course you know will improve your career, a hotel may pay for your training. If not, at least you informed your manager of your ambition to be promoted and learn new skills to improve the customer experience at the hotel.
Join Industry Groups
You may realize that your hotel may not be the best for your future career. If your hotel hires managers from outside the hotel or commonly has managers leaving for other positions, this may be a sign that your hotel is not the best place for your career.
The positive to this is that personal branding for your hotel will increase your branding as a future manager for other hotels. As you know, hotels love to hire their competitor’s previous employees, especially if your hotel is a well-known brand in the area.
By joining industry groups, you are able to brand yourself to your industry as the future of not only your hotel but of the industry as a whole. HR personnel commonly and quietly follow these groups looking for up-and-coming talent. The best HR representatives can see potential from a mile away and you want to be the person they lay their eyes on.
To find these groups, search LinkedIn, Meetup, or Quora for industry groups in your area. If you can´t find them, make your own! Each social media platform has its own speciality. For example, Quora and LinkedIn can be for national or global hospitality professionals, while Meetup is for local professionals.
Contribute to these groups on a daily or weekly basis. Ask hospitality questions, contribute to discussions, and ask for suggestions about your hotel’s problems. Through participating in these groups, you build your personal brand and market yourself as an active member of your industry.
If you implement these guidelines you will see your career flourish. These tips can be implemented at any stage of your career whether you’re the manager, general manager, or CEO. The hospitality industry is a tight-knit community where everyone knows everyone else. Let your industry know you’re the future leader of your hotel and you will be sure to catch the radar of your hotel’s HR representative and finally after all your hard work and dedication get that golden opportunity to become the manager of your dreams.
