The Revenue Manager selection process
08/06/2021
The hiring process for any vacancy, whatever it may be, most of the times consists in a complex process, with a vast list of important and critical points to take into consideration.
The Revenue Manager position is not an exception, in fact, the complexity of the tasks of this position represents an add on to the validation process. We will go today through the main challenges we face when getting into the task of validating the best-fit candidate.
Do we know where we are and the profile our property needs?
Even before thinking of starting with the hiring process, we need to understand what the status of our property is:
- Current Revenue Management actions and activities
- Rate structure
- Distribution structure
- Source of business segmentation
- Product audit and analysis
- Reservations inputting procedure
- Available systems and tools
- Reliability of the information extracted from systems
Once we are all set on the current hotel situation, this will ease the task of defining the aspects with the most improvement potential and it will also facilitate the task of defining current needs that will define the Revenue Manager profile we should start looking for.
How do we validate the candidate?
In our opinion and given the special and very specific requirements of the profile, limiting the hiring process to a common interview may not be enough. As we all know, in Revenue Management, there is always a big gap from principle to practise!
Our recommendation would be to use role plays and practices with real property data, although we strongly recommend that this part of the process to be led by a recruiter with Revenue Management techniques knowledge, otherwise, validating the results could become an extremely difficult task.
How do we follow up and check on the candidate’s development?
The sector has taken some precious and important steps to explain to the rest of the tourism sector professionals the importance of Revenue Management towards the success of any hotel property.
We would agree that most of the hotel departments today have a clear vision of what the Revenue Manager goals look like, however we are unsure if everyone at the hotel understands the daily tasks of the Revenue Managers, and how to achieve those goals, and consequently, how to validate them on their job positions.
In order to evaluate the Revenue Manager performance, we should take into consideration both market comparisons and stats as well as internal factors:
- Market comparison: This will help us to evaluate whether the performance and evolution of the hotel’s results is in line with the evolution of its direct competitors. To achieve this, we can use data from Benchmarking tools (this will work on consolidated destinations), or by sharing performance data with the hotels in your destination.
- Internal factors: We strongly recommend carrying out periodic internal audits as those will help assessing the success of the newly appointed Revenue Manager. The audits and evaluations should not only be based on checking the turnover improvements but should include other factors related to operational processes. Again, and as mentioned previously, this review should be carried out by personnel with advanced Revenue Management knowledge.
Who covers and looks after Revenue Management strategies and operations while we have an open vacancy?
The lack of an expert Revenue Manager profile looking after the strategy and operations of the job usually adds additional pressure to the hiring process, as sales continue happening and operations do not pause for recruitment, all with no experienced eyes monitoring them and taking actions to redirect them.
It is common that the above-mentioned challenges will lead to an unnecessary and not advisable urge to fill the vacancy sooner than it would be recommended with a profile that does not fit all the hotel needs.
The headhunting services we offer at KAIMO cover the challenges involved in finding and validating Revenue Managers:
- We carry out an audit to better understand your property current status.
- We define together with you the required profile for the vacancy and we carry out a proactive candidates’ research in our database.
- Our Revenue Management and Commercial Skills test is presented to the pre-selected candidates.
- We offer follow up and evaluation services to the newly appointed Revenue Manager even after the hiring process is finalised.
- We look temporarily after the distribution management, reporting structure and other operational processes of the Revenue Manager until the vacancy is filled. Additionally, we offer optional leave coverage in periods when the Revenue Manager might not be available (holidays, leave periods, etc).
We invite you to visit our Headhunting section or to get in touch directly with us if you would like to find out more about our services. We will be happy to help you!