Frankly Speaking: Building a band of baristas taught us valuable hiring lessons

The dust is starting to settle from the plaster-stripped walls, a coat of paint has given our little shop a brand-new start, and the plumbing is in for the coffee machine.

With our opening date looming, it was time to pull a team together to help get us off the ground.

As I’ve mentioned previously, while I consider myself of good taste when it comes to food and coffee, I am not a barista. 

To be a great barista means being a highly-skilled tradesperson — operating heavy machinery, balancing the grind of beans based on the changing environment, let alone the expectation of a fern drawn in perfectly steamed milk on the top of your latte. 

Being a great barista takes time. Time we do not have ourselves before we plan to open. 

So, our plan was this: hire a crack team of baristas, invest the business’ wages into them, and leave all the rest of the front-of-house and customer service roles to us.

I truly believe that you only get one shot at a good first impression, particularly as a new cafe facing a neighbourhood of discerning customers.

If you make great coffee, they will come.

First, we put the call out on Instagram, hoping to pull from our large pool of local followers who already knew who we were and what this project was all about.

That lead us to our first hire, someone with the right balance of personality and experience, who we felt connected with immediately. 

As our applicants via Instagram dwindled, we decided to throw the net further, paying for a job ad on Scout Jobs — a subsidiary of Broadsheet and a magnet for good hospitality workers. 

Having such a great interview experience early on gave us a false sense of certainty that finding the right team would be easy. 

What would follow, however, would be interview after interview that left us feeling deflated and lost. For a while there, it felt like we would never find the right people to complete our team. 

But, slowly and surely, we’ve found our first little band of baristas — kind, thoughtful and creative, with great experience to boot. 

Having now gone through a few weeks of interviews and settling on our final team, there are a few key lessons for hiring that I’ll hold in good stead in the future. 

Allow time for good interviews

We scheduled our interviews on the hour, leaving time between not only to decompress between each but to allow space for conversation to flow. Our worst interview lasted five minutes. Our best lasted 45. 

If we had scheduled back-to-back interviews 15 or 20 minutes apart, we wouldn’t have had the chance to let the conversation flow naturally with the candidates we really connected with. 

Cover letters make a difference

In the end, we received over 50 applications. Some were an instant no, like the handful that had absolutely zero hospitality experience.

But, as someone who has never had to hire a full team before, what was interesting was the difference that a great cover letter makes.

It’s something that we hear a lot from HR representatives, but it really is true.

Applicants who simply uploaded their resume twice instead of taking some time to write a cover letter also weren’t extended an interview. 

Some cover letters were pretty stock standard (with one or two having a distinct air of being written by ChatGPT about them). 

But a great cover letter almost guaranteed an interview, even if it was from an applicant with more limited experience.

Go with your gut while hiring

I was thankful to be going through the hiring process with my sister, as there was someone else there to discuss candidates with and to back up my own thoughts on their suitability.

There were a few interviews that were really borderline, but partway through the process we both decided that unless we were both 100% happy with someone, that was an immediate no. 

The team we ended up with was all an instant “yes” — there was no debate, no uncertainty — just great people we connected with and wanted to work with.

Balance your team

Of course, there is an understanding that some people don’t interview well, and that they may be shy or nervous. I still think you can see a person’s personality and temperament shine through. 

Filling a team with big personalities can be a recipe for disaster — you need to consider bringing on some team members who are a bit more quiet and reserved. Every team needs light and shade to encourage a happy working environment. 

Understand their needs before you start

A question I asked in every interview was “What makes a happy workplace for you?”. 

It really helped to gain some understanding as to what fuels them. Most answers centred around working within a good team, having clear and open communication with management and having enough flexibility to pursue other interests outside of work. 

A happy team means a happy workplace and thus, in my mind, happy customers. 

Am I completely terrified at the prospect of being responsible for the livelihood and happiness of others? Absolutely. 

But am I excited at the prospect of building a community of people I’m thrilled to spend my working hours with? That’s a yes, too. 

I’m sure it’s not going to be smooth sailing. But at least it looks like we’ll have some fun along the way. 

Chryssie Swarbrick is a writer, small-business-juggler, and mum of two. She is currently documenting her adventures in opening a cafe, Two Franks, opposite her childhood home.