Monday, January 12, 2015

Day 6: Putting Skills to Work & Mock Interview

Today, I had the chance to use everything that I learned so far at Schlotzsky's and put them to use. I worked from 8:30 a.m. until 1:00 p.m. doing all different types of tasks. First, it started with sweeping and mopping the floor, then to cleaning the tables. The second thing that I did was get the soups ready and put them in the heater. Third, we had to take care of three catering orders, so I got the chips, the soup, the mints, the silverware, the napkins, and prepared the sandwiches. While doing the catering orders I learned that it is important to make everything that you make look good, not like it was thrown on a plate. Unfortunately, the people who plow the lot do not shovel the sidewalk, so Mr. Rukieh and I put on our boots and coats and shoveled the sidewalks because they had about three inches of snow on them. After that, it was 11:00 and the restaurant was opened. I was down at the finish, putting the toppings and sauces on the sandwiches, then serving them to the customers.


Mr. Rukieh ran a mock interview with me, him as the owner, and me as the interviewee. In order to become an employee of the restaurant, you need to complete and interview with Mr. Rukieh, to help him decide if you are the right person to work at Schlotzsky's. When getting interviewed, there are a few key things that Mr. Rukieh goes over to help him know about the interviewee. The type of questions that Mr. Rukieh asks are questions that fall under behavioral interviewing, which is simply finding out about the interviewee's behavior. The first thing he does is have you run through your average day from when you wake up to when you go to sleep. What he is looking for while doing this is when you wake up and go to bed, telling him if you are good for working night shifts, or morning shifts. Depending on how much detail they explain about their day. Mr. Rukieh gives insight on how detail oriented the interviewee may be in his or her life. The next thing that Mr. Rukieh asks is if they have any prior restaurant experience, letting him know if there is a good spot to put the interviewee on or if he needs to work his way up the work chain. While asking questions, he told me it is important to look for eye contact and repetitive motions that people do to see if they are lying or thinking. Another important thing to do while asking questions is to ask in-depth questions, not cookie "cutter questions" so you can squeeze more information out of the interviewee's answers. Once you know a decent amount about the interviewee, you need to give them a potential awkward situation and ask them what they would do. Once they tell you, you know if they could handle situations correctly or not. The last thing that he asks the interviewee is, "Tell me something that you haven't said yet that would make me want to hire you instead of the next person." Last, once the interview is over he walks the interviewee to their car, and peeks inside to see if it is a pigsty, telling him if they lied or not during the interview, and making sure he doesn't hire someone who doesn't take care of items or lives like a pig. After all of these things are taken into consideration, he makes sure he is following his motto, "hire smart or manage tough," which means hire good employees instead of having to change all of their habits to fit your needs.



Making the Food Look Nice

Side 1 of Interview Sheet

Side 2 of Interview Sheet

2 comments:

  1. What a great experience to have been interviewed and receive some great tips! If you were going to interview an employer, which questions do you think will definitely make your list?

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  2. It was definetly something that opened my eyes up in the restaurant business . It showed me how Mr. Rukieh picks his employees, how he learns about them, and makes it easier to make decisions on whether they are going to be a good employee for what you need or not. I would probably ask the same ones he did, but I thought about interviewing a bit differently. Orginally, I thought that the questions would be more direct. For example, I would have asked, "Why should I hire you?" This is an example of a "cookie-cutter" question, which does not require much thought to answer. What Mr. Rukieh asked was more discreet. He asked questions like: "What past expierience do you have, what are you good at in the restaurant business, why should I hire you and not the next person, and finnaly he says, tell me something that you haven't said yet that you that will make you the best employee." In the end, my questions would be generally the same as in the blog post, but I would have never thought to word them the same as Mr. Rukieh, therefore I wouldn't have been getting as much information out of the interviewees.

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