Meet Thérèse, National Recruitment Manager for Australian Venue Co

Oct 28, 2022

We recently had the pleasure of chatting with Thérèse, National Recruitment Manager for Australian Venue Co (AVC) about her role, her hospo experience, how she thinks the hospitality industry is changing, and learning more about their recent staff drive visit to the UK. 

Listen to the full interview here or read below!

 

So Thérèse, tell us a little bit about yourself and what's your role? 
[I'm] National Recruitment Manager for Australian Venue Co but I have been in hospitality for 18-19 years. I started when I was 16 as a kitchen hand in high school, which then led me to get another kitchen hand role when I decided university wasn't necessarily for me, and then was given an opportunity to jump into a glassy role. 

My manager at the time said “we need to get out of the kitchen” so she gave me an opportunity to get into the front of house. From there it's just been go, go, go. I progressed into several management roles, and then I've been running pubs for [the last] six years as a venue manager,  5 of which were with Aus Venue Co. 

What's your favourite part about working with a group like this or AVC specifically? 
For me it’s knowing that there is more than just being a venue manager. When working for AVC I knew that there were opportunities growing, whether that be in an operations position or I end up in head office, the company was looking to grow exponentially. 

I had times where I wavered and thought “I need to get out”, but every single time they managed to win me back and I think the biggest win was during covid and how this CEO treated us, how he supported us, kept us in work. Even the fact that he fed us, we delivered meals out and by delivering those meals out to all the other teams we got to see everybody. We did a lot of group team dinners where they sent us food and wine and then we all jumped on [zoom]. But ultimately, I was very lucky to be working for AVC.

On the topic of covid, How do you feel about hospitality in this post covid environment? 
So during covid I was still at uni, and then AVC got me into a senior venue manager role. [I was] always passionate about training and development, so I was able to go around to all the different venues but ultimately, [covid] scared the absolute hell out of me. For me, I left school, I lasted not even six months at uni and I started in hospitality, I guess it’s like my second family. They welcomed me, I've got friends for life that I still talk to all around the world.

So you've recently been to the UK and Dubai, what was the aim of that trip?
AVC had been trying to recruit internationally before I even started in the recruitment team. And all the noise that was coming back was whether or not we were a legitimate company. Whether everything we were offering on paper [such as] ”we'll pay for your flights, we'll get your accommodation”… there's so many fishing people out there at the moment that it was a big question whether or not we were legitimate. 

So we basically wanted to put a face to the company. We wanted to go look for international talent, UK talent, and try to convince them to move to Australia. I think the UK hospitality scene is quite similar to Australia, so we thought we'd find like-minded people. One of the positives that came out of covid was the 482 visa, before this front of house managers never were eligible for sponsorship and ultimately a lot of people that I met, were people like me, that weren't eligible for working holiday visa but because of the 482, we can now bring them across. 

Do you think that was a successful visit for both?
The numbers were low, I still think once we were there myself and Christian (Executive Chef at AVC) who is actually English himself and has a really fantastic story about when he came to Australia, and he's now one of our executive chefs. We did a lot of posting on Instagram and LinkedIn and still, I'm getting little trickles of people reaching out to me since [being in the UK]. 

We didn't get the numbers we wanted, we had a great RSVP, [but] the actual numbers on the ground weren’t as [high as] what we wanted, but I still think there was a positive vibe. I still think a lot of people came out to see us there, they then told their friends, it only just builds your brand and builds community. 

The founder of Chefs Forum in the UK and a Brazilian Chef AVC met on the trip and are sponsoring

What do you think's gonna be the biggest challenge for finding staff in the next 3-6 months? 
I think we've seen an uplift in the last few weeks, our bookings have booked for the next two weeks all my team members have all booked out. So, we're starting to see working holidays visas come back, in particular, from Europe. Ultimately the biggest focus has to be and it's always been in the back of our mind in hospitality, and especially as an ex venue operator myself, is alway developing your teams and promoting internally. 

We've just acquired a Chief Development and Training Officer, and we've actually created training as its own department, now, it doesn't fall into HR. So for us as a company and from the CEO, all the way down, it's about internal promotion internal progression. 
When we re-structured the operations team, all those positions were filled by existing Venue Managers, and then those Venue Manager positions were filled with Assistant Venue Managers and so on and so forth. It's very rare that we try to recruit a VM externally, only if there isn't a strong candidate. 
So it's all about our people. It's about training and it's about development. It's about our futures. 

What are you and the team doing at AVC to attract and entice more applicants in general? And what can we bring back as an industry to those applicants? What can we give back to the community? 
I think it's just selling hospitality as a viable long-term career, especially when I look at the people at head office, easily 50% of us are all ex-venue. We try to sell the fact that there's a plethora of opportunities, mobility options, whether they want to work in Melbourne, and then move to Sydney, we'll support that, we’ll help them relocate. 

Welcome vouchers are something we're doing for retention, really targeting juniors and lower levels with no experience yet. We just want a good attitude and we want a good cultural fit, want good people. I think the biggest ethos that you'll see around is “higher for will and train for skill”,  probably our biggest approach at the moment. 

So if you're a good person, you've got a good head on your shoulders, we'll take you on, and then we'll invest. We promise and assure them that we will invest the time into them. Promote you into whatever the next steps are from there. 

What do you think is gonna be the biggest game changer in hospo in the next five years?
So I actually did some training with all the states and VMs recently and [being] someone [who] has worked in hospo for so long and been so passionate about training development, I expressed to them that yes, it's hard now, but think about every single company having such a strong focus on training and development and now we're actually putting our money where our mouths are, is only going to create better managers than what we have now. Because we're investing that time and then I think the industry is only going to be stronger with quality staff. 

So already a culture is starting to really shine. 
Yeah, and I honestly believe in my heart that the hospitality industry is just gonna go from strength to strength with the quality of people. More people and parents need to see hospitality as a future career, not just something you fall into. Good money and flexible hours, you don't have to be working this mythical 67 hours a week, especially with AVC, we do not promote people working more than 50 hours. We want you to have your work life balance. We promote four-day working weeks, we don't want hospitality to be that [67 hour weeks mindset] anymore. 
I think with all these changes that are starting to happen and having a company as big as AVC leading the four, I think [hospitality is] only going to be stronger and better. 

 Exec Chef Christian (left) and a Chef from Bristol being sponsored by AVC.

If you could have it all again, would you go into hospitality? And if the answer is yes, what would you have told yourself as you were entering hospo? 
I beat myself up a lot over the years because I missed so many birthdays, so many events or whatever it may be, and while I thought I would have loved to have been a veterinarian (what Thérèse studied at uni), I often found myself saying to myself I wish I pursued my university degree. But the truth of the matter is, I would like to think I'm extremely successful. I earn really good money and I'm working for one of the best hospitality companies in the world. I'm now the national recruitment manager. 

I would have just told myself to just run the path. I've travelled the world with hospitality. I've got friends for life because of hospitality, I've met so many amazing people. I've had so many great opportunities, I probably wouldn't change anything.
In all honesty there have been times where I really wished I had just finished my university [degree]. But I wouldn't be where I am now with the people and the knowledge, and the wisdom if I didn't just stay the course.

Ready to make the jump and work for one of Australia’s best hospitality groups? Check out all of the Australian Venue Co roles here.