There’s a New Troupe in Stow Town

When we set out to find our staff, we decided that we needed great characters and personalities, people with natural charisma and customer service skills, who can work together as a team and can give our guests a warm Cotswold welcome. We know that we can teach our staff how to deliver the best service or clean a room spotlessly, but we can’t train a personality. So that’s why we decided to hold a recruitment workshop, rather than traditional interviews, to find our troupe.

After an introduction from Charlotte, which explained a little bit more about The Old Stocks Inn, our values and the experience we want to give our guests, it was straight on with the exercises. We wanted to see how people worked together, how they reacted to problems and how they would build up an understanding of our guests and their needs.

First up, the potential troupe members got to know each other, because to work effectively together, they have to know and understand each other. Even at this early stage, we were on the lookout for natural pairings that could work well at The Old Stocks. We decided to have a bit of fun, getting them to work in groups to see who could make the tallest giraffe from newspaper, and it was a great way to get a feel for how everyone could work together as a team.

In a busy hotel and restaurant, there’s always a lot going on, and our troupe members will need to think on their feet to make the right decisions. We gave them a problem and priority management situation, so that the groups had to work together to prioritise conflicting tasks to deliver optimum customer service. Based on our workshop, we’re sure that their hard work and charming personalities will leave guests with lasting, happy memories and wanting to come back for more!

We were very impressed with how our potential troupe members really threw themselves into the scenarios, and it was great to see the personalities we’ve been looking for come alive at the session. We look forward to welcoming many of them to our troupe and to introduce them to you soon.