A CV can tell you where someone has worked, roughly for how long, and whether they can put a document together. It can't tell you how they behave at 9pm on a Saturday with three tables waiting and a colleague who hasn't turned up. For most hospitality roles, that second thing is what decides whether a hire works out.
So the practical answer is not to bin CVs, but to give them a smaller job. Use the CV to check the basics and generate questions. Then make the real decision on three things a CV can't show you: a structured conversation about how the person actually works, an honest match between the role and their life, and, where it's useful, a short, fair and properly run trial shift.
We've written separately about hiring for attitude and the traits worth interviewing for. This post is about the CV itself: how to read one, what to look at instead, and how to hire well when the person in front of you has very little on paper.
What a hospitality CV can and can't tell you
Most hospitality CVs are short. Plenty of good candidates don't have one at all, or wrote one in ten minutes on a phone. That's worth remembering before you treat a thin CV as a weak candidate.
Here's a simple way to keep the CV in its place.
| What the CV says | What it actually tells you | What to check instead |
|---|---|---|
| "2 years at a busy gastropub" | They held a job in a similar setting | What they did on a typical shift, and what they were trusted with |
| A list of venues, none for long | Could be churn, seasonal work, study, or bad employers | Ask why each one ended, without assuming |
| No hospitality experience | They haven't worked in a venue yet | What they've done that involved people, pressure or routine |
| A gap of several months | Something happened. That's all | Usually nothing, unless it's relevant to the role |
| Polished layout and wording | They (or someone) are good at CVs | How they talk about real situations when you ask |
| "Excellent customer service skills" | Nothing. Everyone writes this | A specific example of a guest they helped |
The point of the right-hand column is that each item becomes a question for the conversation, not a reason to reject someone before you've met them.
Where experience genuinely matters
Some roles do need proven skills from day one. A head chef, a sommelier, a general manager or anyone holding a licence-critical responsibility needs a track record you can test. For those, the CV is a useful starting point, and you'll want to probe the claims properly.
For most entry and mid-level roles, though (front of house, bar, kitchen porter, commis, housekeeping, reception), what someone learned elsewhere is less important than whether they turn up, listen, and look after the people around them. Those roles are where leaning on CVs costs you the most good candidates.
What to look at instead
A structured conversation, not a chat
An unstructured interview mostly measures whether someone is comfortable chatting to a manager. A structured one asks every candidate for the same role the same core questions, about real events, and notes the answers against the same few points.
Keep it short and consistent:
- Agree three or four things the role genuinely needs (for example: stays calm when busy, owns mistakes, works with the team, reliable).
- Pick one or two questions for each, asking what the person did, not what they would do.
- Make notes during or straight after, before you talk to anyone else about the candidate.
- Decide with whoever else met them, comparing notes against the same points.
If you need the questions themselves, our behavioural interview questions guide has them by role, and the interview question builder will put a set together for you.
Role context and availability, honestly on both sides
Availability is usually treated as a yes/no box: can you do weekends? It's more useful as a two-way conversation about whether this job fits this person's life.
Be specific about the reality of the role: typical shift times, how often the rota changes, late finishes, split shifts, how people get home, what a busy night feels like. Then ask about their side: other commitments, travel, how many hours they actually want, whether they need consistency.
This isn't about screening people out. It's about avoiding the hire who says yes to everything in the interview and leaves in week four because the job was never going to work around their childcare or their last bus. A mismatch like that is an avoidable reason new starters quit early, and it's usually visible before you hire if you ask.
A conversation-starting script
If you want something to read from, this works for most roles:
"Before we talk about you, let me tell you what this job is really like. Most shifts are [times]. Fridays and Saturdays are busy, and the rota is usually out [when]. The hardest part tends to be [honest answer]. The best bit is [honest answer].
Does any of that not work for you? It's fine if it doesn't, I'd rather know now.
Now, tell me about a time you were really busy at work, or anywhere else. What did you do?"
It sets an honest tone, invites candidates to raise a problem early, and moves straight onto something real.
Trial shifts: useful, if they're fair
A short trial can tell you things a conversation can't: whether someone asks questions, how they take a correction, whether they notice what needs doing. It also lets the candidate see your venue as it really is. But this is also where the law matters, and where a badly run trial can put good people off.
The UK position (checked October 2026)
There's no specific statute that defines a trial shift. The government's minimum wage guidance on unpaid work trial periods (last updated 6 January 2026) says the current law "does not define a 'trial work period' or state precisely when at least the minimum wage must be paid". Instead, it lists factors a tribunal would look at, including whether the trial is genuinely for recruitment, whether it's longer than you'd reasonably need to test someone, how closely the person is observed, and whether their work has value to you beyond testing them.
The same guidance says that, in the government's view, someone working a trial lasting longer than one day is likely to be entitled to the minimum wage "in all but very exceptional circumstances". Its own hospitality examples point the same way: a short, observed two-hour trial for a café waiter is treated as unlikely to need paying, while a long trial on a restaurant's busiest day, used to cover a staff shortage, is treated as likely to.
The Employment Rights Act 2025, which received Royal Assent on 18 December 2025, deals with things like guaranteed hours and notice of shifts. Going by its contents, it doesn't include a section on trial shifts, so the minimum wage guidance above is still the main reference. This is general information, not legal advice. If you're unsure about a particular arrangement, check the guidance yourself or speak to Acas.
The simple rule most operators can live with: if it looks like a shift, pay for it. If someone is on the rota, covering a section or serving paying guests, treat it as work.
A fair trial shift checklist
- Keep it short: long enough to see what you need, usually a couple of hours, not a full service.
- Tell the candidate beforehand how long it is, what they'll do, whether it's paid, and when they'll hear back.
- Pay for it if there's any doubt, and say so up front.
- Assign one named person to host them. Nobody should spend a trial being ignored by a stretched team.
- Decide in advance what you're watching for, using the same points as the interview.
- Don't use trials to fill gaps in the rota, and don't run them on your busiest night.
- Ask the host for a short written note straight after, before anyone compares opinions.
- Give the candidate an answer, whichever way it goes, and some feedback if they want it.
Good candidates usually have other options. A well-run trial is part of how they decide whether to choose you. There's more on what the term covers in our glossary entry on trial shifts.
How to hire people with little or no experience
Lots of people come into hospitality with nothing relevant on paper: school and college leavers, career changers, parents coming back to work, people who've been out of work for a while. If you only hire people who've done the job before, you're all fishing in the same small pond and paying for the habits picked up elsewhere.
When the CV is empty, look for evidence from the rest of someone's life:
- Responsibility: caring for a relative, a regular volunteering role, captaining a team, holding down a weekend job anywhere.
- Dealing with people: retail, call centres, coaching kids, helping at a club or place of worship.
- Routine and reliability: turning up to something regularly, without being chased.
- Learning something new: how they picked up a skill, and what they did when it was hard.
Then make the first weeks do the heavy lifting. Someone without experience needs a clear onboarding plan for the first 90 days: a named buddy, a short list of what they'll learn first, and regular check-ins. Hiring for potential only works if someone is responsible for developing it.
Bringing it together
None of this needs a new system. Use the CV to spot questions, not to make the decision. Ask everyone the same few questions about real events. Be honest about the job and listen to what the person needs from it. If you run a trial, keep it short, host it properly and pay for it when it looks like work. And when someone has little on paper, look at the rest of their life before you decide they've got nothing to offer.
The decision stays with the people doing the hiring. Better information just makes it a fairer one. If you want your managers running these conversations the same way every time, it's part of what we cover in our workshops.