As a career coach for restaurant managers I spend more time shaking my head, and biting my tongue, than I spend actually helping people. There are so many people who love the idea of being a restaurant manager. They want the prestige, and the challenge. They want to ‘be’ seen as someone who can handle crisis, and they want to be the happy, affable person who greets prestigious patrons and chats with famous people.

From this pool of Restaurant Management Candidates, I need to separate the dreamers from the Candidates. Unfortunately, everyone wants to be a restaurant manager. No one wants the ‘life’ of a restaurant manager.  They want to BE a restaurant manager. They don’t want to LIVE the life.

We see this in all industries. I’ve talked with many career coaches and they have all met people who spend years planning, preparing, and talking, but they never ‘do’ anything. All coaches have met people who have been writing the same book for 11 years. Or, the painter who is always taking new courses, but never investing in the tools, or finding the time, to perfect their technique.

Talking vs Acting

If you want to be successful then you need to transition from a ‘planner’ to a  ‘do’er’. People can get caught in a vicious cycle of planning, preparing, writing resumes and rewriting, and never actually accomplish what they set out to do.

Success is a Habit

If you want to be a risk taker then you need to start taking risks. ‘you never fail until you quit.’ Failure is a tool that teaches us how to observe, predict, and prepare for the unexpected. It teaches us not to over value our skills and abilities. Each time we succeed, or fail, we learn new skills.

Unfortunately, many of today’s candidates feel that they should be paid to learn. They feel that it is the employer’s responsibility to bear the burden of their failures. They want a job as a restaurant manager, without learning how to avoid failure, predict opportunities, and create a platform of success.

The statement that ‘success is a habit’ means that a person has learned the personal work ethics, and has acquired the knowledge needed to keep going until they succeed. They have learned how to make success happen, in any situation. And, they have also learned that it is their responsibility to make themselves successful. They do it on their own time, with their own projects.

Communication

You are only as good as your communication skills. I’ve never sat in a session correcting someone’s grammar while they are talking, but I have felt like recording their ‘south park dialogue’ as they try to convince me that they are ready to manage a Manhattan Hotel.

As a Career Coach, and as most of the Human Resources Mangers that I’ve worked with will tell you, there is no reason to have a poor vocabulary. There is no reason you cannot hold a succinct, verbal conversation, creating full sentences, with proper grammar. There is no reason that you need to rely on spell check to make sure your article is error free.

The internet offers hundreds of free courses designed to help improve your conversational grammar and vernacular.

Don’t Fall For Traps

If you are ready to manage a Manhattan Hotel and Restaurant combo, then you won’t fall for some basic interview traps. I’ve sat in sessions with ‘big dreamers’ who appear to have the passion needed to succeed. As they ramble on, revealing more and more holes in their skill set and experiences, I lay some traps.

One that most people fall for is making a reference to a television show. My current favorite, while listening to someone with poor grammar skills is to mention a recent, apparent metaphor, from Game of Thrones. When the Candidate launches into an animated description of the scene, which they inevitably remember, they are telling me that they are more interested in television than upgrading their skills, or improving their job opportunities.