One of the major challenges when it comes to recruiting your rotational counterpart in the interior is that what looked good on paper doesn’t necessarily transpire into a good hire.
The Chief Stew’s CV looked great, they interviewed well and now they are onboard, but it’s not quite working out as expected. And worse, it’s having a negative impact on how the entire department is functioning.
Of course, rotational Chief Stews do not need to be carbon copies of each other, but there must be some level of consistency to avoid disruption to the program, crew productivity and most importantly, the guest and owner experience.
Rotational roles need to have aligned beliefs and approaches as well as compatibility.
So here are a couple of critical questions to ask when interviewing a potential candidate as a rotational Chief Stew.
How do you manage and motivate your team?
This is important to identify whether you and the candidate are polar opposites when it comes to the way you manage tasks and crew in your department.
If you give your Head of Housekeeping and Head of Service certain autonomy to run their divisions with guidance from you, but someone else likes to micro manage, then that is going to cause issues.
Perhaps you’re someone who likes to start and end the day with a meeting, but someone else sticks to handing out work lists.
Some Chief Stews may take on complete responsibilities for social activities onboard for crew during downtime, where others may take a more collaborative approach, delegating such tasks and making crew feel more involved.
Follow up questions might be:
- How often do you hold team meetings?
- What level of decision-making would you give other senior crew (i.e. HOS/HOH/2nd Stew)?
- Can you give an example of an issue you would let them (i.e. HOS/HOH/2nd Stew) manage and an issue you would get involved in?
- How would your previous crew describe your management style?
- Do you encourage crew mucking in/gaining experience across different areas (e.g. housekeeping, service, laundry) or prefer to maintain clear responsibilities?
What would or have you done to resolve crew tension?
Regardless of how good a yacht is or how well it is managed, no HOD is likely to ever go through a job without experiencing some kind of crew tension. In fact, it’s pretty much 100% guaranteed that you’ll need to resolve some kind of conflict on a regular basis. It doesn’t have to be in a notoriously clicky environment, but the very nature of the job means there are likely to have been at least one or two run-ins.
It’s important to understand how your rotational counterpart would deal with issues if they arose and any experience they have of similar situations in the past.
Ask for an example of a problem and how it was resolved or give them a scenario and ask how they would deal with it.
Get in touch if you’d like to discuss this further, want some advice or need support in finding your rotational Chief Stew – caroline@quaycrew.com
