What Thirty-Two Years in Hospitality Taught Me About Hiring the Right People

A resume can tell you where someone has been. It cannot tell you who they are when the kitchen printer jams during a 300-cover night and the sous chef just walked out.

I have been reading resumes in this industry for over three decades now. First as an operator, hiring roughly a thousand people across five restaurants my husband AJ and I owned together. Then as a recruiter, placing senior leaders into restaurant groups and luxury hotels across the country. And the single biggest lesson I have taken from all of it is this. The resume is where the conversation starts. It is never where the decision gets made.

That might sound obvious. But I watch it happen constantly. Hiring managers fall in love with credentials. They see the right brands, the right titles, the right number of years, and they skip the part that actually matters. Who is this person when the pressure hits? What drives them? Where did that drive come from? And do they belong in your restaurant, or just in a restaurant?

After 32 years, I have developed patterns for reading all of that. Not from a textbook. From doing the work. Let me share a few of them.

Every Restaurant on a Resume Tells a Story You Can Read if You Have Been in the Industry

When I look at a resume, I am not just reading job titles and dates. I am reading reputations. After this many years recruiting in hospitality, I have heard a hundred stories about every restaurant that shows up on a candidate’s work history. I know which ownership groups treat their people well and which ones burn through managers every six months. I know which kitchens develop talent and which ones just use it up.

That kind of knowledge turns a resume into something completely different. It becomes almost instinctual. You can look down someone’s career path and the restaurants themselves paint a picture before you ever pick up the phone. Sometimes those stories line up into something that makes perfect sense for a role I am filling. Other times they paint something more interesting.

Even if a candidate is not a perfect fit for the search I am working on, if their resume tells a compelling story, I will take the interview anyway. I want to understand why they ended up working for certain people. What they took from each experience. Because every one of those conversations helps me sharpen my own instincts about where to find the best people and where to avoid looking.

That is not something you learn from a recruiting certification. That is something you learn from three decades of being inside the industry you are hiring for.

The Resume That Tells Me the Most Is the One That Shows Grit

The resumes I pay the most attention to are the ones that show a trajectory. Someone from a small town who worked at their local neighborhood restaurant. Then they went to culinary school. Then they moved to New York and started doing stages at the best kitchens in the city. You can tell from that path alone that this is someone who is driven not just to learn, but to improve their life. They were willing to humble themselves and work the hardest, smallest jobs in the biggest, most important kitchens. That takes a very specific kind of person.

After talking to thousands of candidates over the years, the stories behind that grit are remarkably similar. Most of them grew up in modest circumstances. A single parent household. Having to figure things out early. For a lot of the people I recruit, it looked like the kitchen. They started cooking dinner for their mom when she came home from work. Or they got a job as a dishwasher at 16 because they needed to help pay the bills.

And then somewhere along the way, a chef looked at them and said, "You are actually really good at this." For many of them, it was the first time anyone had ever said that. They latched onto it. They tried to prove themselves. And restaurants gave them the one thing that a lot of other industries do not. A real chance to climb the ladder no matter where they came from.

Nobody works harder than a chef. And to get from that dishwasher job to running multiple restaurants or owning your own, that is a remarkable story. I hear it all the time. And those are the people I almost always take an interview with, because that grit is exactly what it takes to succeed in the roles we are filling.

The Pattern That Burns You Is the One You Ignore Twice

For all the positive patterns, there are also the ones that teach you the hard way. And the one I have zero patience for at this point is the no-show. I keep notes. I track it in our system. And my policy is simple.

Everyone gets one freebie. We are all busy. Schedules get away from people. It happens to the best of us. If someone’s resume is strong and they are passively open to a new role but not actively searching, I might even give them a second pass. But if you miss a third call with me, you will not hear from me again. I do not care how impressive the resume is.

And I do not think anyone is immune to this. I have had Michelin-star chefs no-show on interviews. It is not a seniority thing. It is an organizational thing. If you cannot manage your own calendar, that tells me something about how you are going to manage a team of 60. Not being able to keep your appointments is a signal of a bigger issue, and that bigger issue is exactly the kind of thing that causes problems in the leadership roles we are placing.

The patterns that protect you as a recruiter are the ones you are willing to enforce. Even when the resume looks perfect on paper.

Operator Experience Is Not a Nice-to-Have. It is the Qualification.

I did not plan on becoming a recruiter. I planned on running restaurants and acting on television. And for a long time, I did both. But when I finally made the transition into recruiting, the thing that made me good at it immediately was not training or methodology. It was the fact that I had already hired roughly a thousand people. I had already managed Saturday night service. I had already opened restaurants and watched teams come together or fall apart based on the people in the room.

That operator experience is what lets me read a resume differently than someone who has never worked in a kitchen or managed a dining room. It is what lets me spot grit on a page. It is what lets me know that a Michelin-star background and a fast-casual concept are two completely different worlds, even when the titles look the same.

Every recruiter at The Madison Collective has been a senior-level operator in hospitality. That is not a hiring preference. It is the foundation of everything we do. Because the only way to know what a restaurant actually needs is to have been the person standing in it.

The resume gets you to the conversation. The operator on the other side of the table is the one who knows what to do with it.

About The Author:

Martha Madison is the founder of The Madison Collective, a hospitality-focused recruitment firm built by operators who have actually worked the floor. Before launching her recruiting career, she spent over two decades inside restaurant operations, training under cocktail pioneer Julie Reiner in New York, rising to general manager, and owning five restaurants with her husband AJ. When she is not placing hospitality leaders, she is probably on a television set. Connect with Martha at www.madison-collective.com.

Looking for a hospitality leader who actually fits?

We have spent decades inside the restaurants we now hire for. If you are searching for senior leaders who understand your concept, your guests, and your team, let's talk.

Work With Us