You weight the interview heavily toward character, ask questions a resume cannot answer, and accept that the technically weaker candidate with the right disposition will cost less over five years than the technically stronger one without it. Across eighty interviews, every leader described some version of this trade and none would hire against it.
Of everything I heard across eighty interviews on five continents, the advice on hiring was the most unanimous. People who have never met one another, running wilderness lodges in Tanzania and three Michelin star kitchens in Spain, gave me the same instruction in nearly the same words. Hire for character. Teach the rest. The skills can be acquired over months on the floor or at the station. The character has to arrive with the candidate, because it cannot be acquired at all.
Graham Ledger, then general manager of Singita across South Africa, Zimbabwe and Tanzania, is the one who gave the practice a number.
“The 80 refers to enthusiasm and cultural fit, while the 20 refers to the technical side which can be taught and developed over time. The 80 portion is the key.” Graham Ledger, then general manager, Singita
The eighty is the door. If a candidate cannot pass it, the twenty does not matter. Ledger’s interview questions follow from that. He asks about family, school years, achievements and friendships. He asks whether candidates are still in touch with old friends, because he reads that as evidence of a commitment to valuing relationships. The questions sound personal until you see what they measure. A person who cannot maintain a friendship across a decade is unlikely to maintain a returning guest relationship across the same span.
Marc von Arnim, then general manager of Park Hyatt Sydney, listens for whether applicants speak from the heart and show emotional intelligence. His reasoning is that the luxury hotel business is about how the guest is made to feel, so part of the interview is simply intuition about how the applicant makes the interviewer feel. The candidate who can describe a difficult guest moment without a rehearsed corporate answer, or a failure without performing the recovery, has shown the capacity the job will demand every day. The candidate fluent only in credentials has not.
Aaron Kaupp, then general manager of Le Royal Monceau, Raffles Paris, runs the interview as a stress test. He asks about difficult situations the applicant has faced at work and how they handled them, looking for the ability to empathize, reason and resolve a problem calmly. The resume cannot show that trait. The story of a bad night can.
The chefs land in the same place, which surprised me less once I understood the economics. Matthew Orlando, then chef and owner of Amass in Copenhagen, could afford to be demanding on technique and chose a different priority.
“You must surround yourself with passionate people that really care about their work, and in that sense, I hire based on personality more than I do skill.” Matthew Orlando, then chef and owner, Amass, Copenhagen
Jonnie Boer of De Librije put every applicant through a few days on trial in the kitchen, and told me experience was not that important compared with passion, perseverance and the right personality. Three days at a station is a more honest read on character than any number of interview hours.
The hard part of this practice is the trade it requires. In a brigade organized on Escoffier’s hierarchy, technical proficiency is assumed at every level, and the character superior commis may arrive two notches below where the kitchen needs them. The chef carries that gap personally for the first several months. The operators in this book have made that trade many times. In their experience the technically superior candidate without character costs more in year one than the other candidate costs in training over five. They have lived the math, and they will not hire against it.
Chapter 4, First the Team, follows this through onboarding, culture, protection and the dignified departure, and lays out the People-First model of select, develop and defend.