What AI Tools Actually Help Win More Hospitality Talent? HR Leaders Weigh In.

By 2033, one in eight new jobs will be in the leisure and hospitality industry, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But despite the industry’s boom, hospitality employers are still struggling with a shortage of qualified workers. Some 77% of restaurants report difficulty filling job openings, and among hotel operators, 71% have trouble filling open positions even after increasing wages and benefits, Hotel Dive reports.

The fierce competition for qualified candidates means hiring speed is a key consideration. Leading hospitality organizations are investing in tools that help them hire faster—think automation and mobile apps—and adopting a more holistic mindset that considers the candidate experience beyond the initial application.

We know that AI solutions promise to help hospitality hiring professionals meet today’s challenges.

But with so many tools to choose from, how do you find the right solutions that help you achieve OKRs, and how do you overcome hurdles to adoption from within your organization?

We asked 1,000 hospitality HR leaders to weigh in on this question. Get the full report or keep reading for highlights.

There’s no doubt HR technology is indispensable in hospitality, with 76% of respondents in our survey saying their current solutions are integral to operations.

But which AI-powered hiring solutions will have the biggest impact on hospitality hiring?

Our respondents’ top recommendations are AI-driven resume screening (24%), new hire retention strategies and data analytics (19%), and automated background check data collection (19%).

Easing the madness of screening hundreds or thousands of applications for seasonal work feels like a quick win for any employer hiring at scale, especially in industries like hospitality, where seasonal surges mean your team needs to move at lightning speed.

Just be sure to choose AI solutions that can show you how their application or resume screening process eliminates bias, aligns with your organization's policies, and can be customized to fit the role you’re screening for.

Hospitality leaders know it’s critical to keep the staff you already have trained and on the job from leaving for a better offer. Many HR teams are looking to AI solutions to help them gather data on retention trends and proactively prevent attrition.

Many seasonal candidates accept the first job offer they receive. However, hospitality background checks are a common cause of hiring delays, especially if your provider uses outdated manual processes.

Using an AI-powered solution for background screening helps facilitate faster hiring. With Checkr’s automated platform, 89% of all criminal checks, including county searches, complete within one hour, so you can quickly determine if a candidate can continue the onboarding process.

Budget constraints are the biggest barrier to optimizing hiring technology, according to hospitality HR leaders Checkr surveyed. Other hurdles include the difficulty of customizing solutions, internal resistance to adopting new technology, and problems scaling tech solutions in high-volume hiring environments.

Here’s how hospitality hiring teams can overcome these hurdles.

Show that the new technology will demonstrate ROI—and enlist your team to gather metrics and use cases.

For example, you can highlight the benefits that a streamlined user experience offers both candidates and hiring managers by quantifying estimated reductions in manual work, time to hire, and candidate drop-off.

Tools that combine popular pre-built solutions with customizable packages offer the best of both worlds. For instance, you might use a pre-set industry background check package when hiring for standard, seasonal hospitality positions (such as servers and housekeeping), and tailor packages to include customized screenings for jobs that require more robust background checks (for example, a manager who will handle finances).

Dramatic ups and downs in hiring are par for the course in the high-turnover hospitality world. Make sure any hiring solution you choose has the capacity to handle high-volume hiring needs without slowing down. Decentralized hospitality companies in which local managers oversee hiring can benefit from a clear billing hierarchy that matches recruiting costs to the appropriate cost center.

While most hospitality HR leaders in our survey reported that their existing HR tech tools meet their expectations, there’s still plenty of room for improvement. Just 17% said their HR solutions exceeded expectations, and 37% described their technology’s performance as marginally satisfactory or unsatisfactory.

Taking a band-aid approach to AI solutions is a common mistake that typically delivers disappointing results. Onboarding disparate AI tools, each addressing a single problem, tends to add to your HR team’s workload rather than streamlining it. In fact, lack of integration between tools and systems is a major challenge to optimizing HR tech stacks, according to hospitality leaders in our survey.

For better outcomes, start by evaluating AI tools with a systemic lens. For a truly transformative technology upgrade, AI should be woven into your workflows from their foundation.

Wherever you see a workflow falling short in terms of efficiency, scalability, and strategic impact, don’t just ask, “How can I fix this one problem with AI?”

Instead, explore comprehensive tech solutions that will work together to automate your hiring funnel better end-to-end. Put another way: Rather than just piling new technology on top of outdated manual processes, look for integrated solutions with machine learning and AI at their core for greater speed and accuracy.

To identify quick wins and uncover larger-scale technology upgrades that will help your HR team stay competitive, first look for any scattered, repetitive, manual, or frequently blocked tasks in your hiring flow. This will help your team understand where integrated AI-powered solutions could deliver the most value, and help you create the business case for bringing on new technology.

For example, the background check process often slows down during the adjudication stage, which involves compliance with complex location-specific regulations and frequently requires manual report review. While making these decisions, a competitor could snap up your candidate.

An AI-powered background check solution that integrates directly with your ATS/HRIS can enable faster, more confident hiring decisions. Look for a tool that can automatically categorize criminal charges and generate the appropriate authorizations, disclosures, and adverse action documents for each candidate, while incorporating programmatic screening for consistent decision-making. HR teams that use Checkr’s automated Assess solution spend up to 97% less time adjudicating background checks.

AI-powered hiring tools that offer seamless, pre-built integrations with the applicant tracking systems (ATS) you already use will further streamline your workflows. Integrations help to ensure a consistent candidate experience while reducing your team’s workload, so you can hire faster and at scale, even with limited resources.

Hiring can be a massive stress for HR professionals at hospitality companies thanks to labor shortages and brutal competition. Incorporating the right AI solutions into your tech stack can ease your woes and modernize your approach to make your organization more competitive.

Checkr’s advanced screening technology, AI-powered automations, easy-to-use dashboard, plus 100+ ATS integrations can help you hire high-quality hospitality candidates, fast. Working with a background check partner like Checkr provides speed without compromising on security, making background checks one less thing to stress about in hospitality hiring.

Curious how other hospitality leaders are handling today’s biggest hiring challenges? Read our survey report, Future-Ready Hospitality HR: Overcoming Challenges with Strategic Solutions.

About the author

Karen Axelton writes about business topics and best practices. She has written hundreds of articles on business subjects, including background screening, hiring and employment trends, human resource management, and the use of technology in the workplace. Her work includes educational articles, e-books, white papers, and case studies.