A Recipe for Hiring Success: Medford Village Country Club Fills Executive Chef Role With iHire’s Industry-Focused Recruitment Solutions

The full story:

Background

Medford Village Country Club (MVCC) is a private, member-focused club dedicated to providing exceptional golf, dining, social, and recreational experiences for individuals and families in the South Jersey community. The organization prides itself on creating a welcoming atmosphere, delivering outstanding service, and continually enhancing the overall member experience through quality amenities, events, and hospitality.

Challenges

When an Executive Chef who had been with the organization for 35 years left, MVCC had to backfill the position quickly. It was critical to find someone who demonstrated strong culinary and leadership abilities, possessed operational experience and creativity, and aligned with the culture, standards, and long-term vision of the club.

MVCC sought a solution that would expand its candidate reach and connect the organization with highly qualified hospitality professionals in a competitive hiring market. Their primary goal was to identify and hire an Executive Chef who could elevate the dining experience for members while leading and developing a strong culinary team.

Solutions

To facilitate their search for an Executive Chef, MVCC turned to iHire, an industry-specific recruitment platform with 57 talent communities, including iHireChefs. The organization chose to bring iHire into its recruitment tech stack because of its strong reputation for highly targeted hiring, particularly in the culinary and hospitality sectors. In fact, iHireChefs is one of iHire’s most active communities, with a talent pool of more than 420,000 candidates.

MVCC chose to advertise its Executive Chef opening through iHire’s Job Slots – flexible, interchangeable postings that are promoted to matching candidates in search results, on their iHire dashboards, and in branded job alert emails. MVCC collaborated with iHire’s Hiring Success Strategists to maximize the job posting’s appeal by highlighting the company’s unique culture built on professionalism, genuine connection, pride in service, and sense of belonging. 

MVCC also subscribed to iHire’s Resume Search, allowing its hiring team to proactively source candidates from the database of nearly 3 million professionals, and set up a free company profile that showcases its employer brand to entice potential applicants.

“The implementation process was straightforward and efficient,” said Robert Doria, General Manager of MVCC. “We worked with the iHire team to develop and post the position, outline the qualifications we were seeking, and target candidates within the hospitality and culinary industries. The platform made it easy to review applicants, manage communication, and streamline the screening process, allowing us to move quickly while still being selective in our search.”

As candidates applied for the Executive Chef job, MVCC kept tabs on their statuses with iHire’s applicant tracking system (ATS) – indicating whom they’ve interviewed, disqualified, pipelined, and more. Their hiring team also utilized iHire’s messaging tools to correspond with applicants directly through the platform.

Results

With iHire, MVCC narrowed its Executive Chef search down to seven highly qualified candidates for its leadership team to meet and interview. From there, they selected two finalists to participate in a final cooking presentation for ownership and key decision makers before choosing their eventual new hire.

With iHire’s industry-focused approach to talent acquisition, MVCC’s ad received an above-average 15% view-to-apply rate, meaning approximately 1 in 7 candidates who viewed the job ad applied. Additionally, 1 in 3.6 applicants from iHire were interviewed, whereas 1 in 20 is the industry standard.

Since hiring its Executive Chef, MVCC has seen the kitchen and overall food operation move in a positive direction. He has introduced new menu offerings, elevated the dining experience, and focused heavily on training and developing the kitchen staff. MVCC believes his leadership is helping raise both the skillsets of the team and the overall expectations for its culinary program.

“iHire positively impacted our organization by helping us efficiently connect with a strong network of qualified hospitality and culinary professionals during an important leadership transition. The platform expanded our reach, improved the quality of candidates we received, and helped streamline the overall recruiting and screening process,” Doria concluded.

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