How Skilled Is That Food Truck Job Candidate

The point of a job interview is to make sure the candidate has the necessary skills to do the work in your food truck. But aside from references, how can you determine if a potential employee actually knows what they claims to know? Today we’ll cover three tips for finding out how deep a food truck job candidate’s knowledge and experience goes so you hire the best available.

How Skilled Is That Food Truck Job Candidate?

Ask “how” and “why.” When an interviewee relays a success story, drill down to understand as much as you can. Keep asking, “How did you do that?” or “Why?” until you get to a question the prospective food truck employee can’t answer. This isn’t always comfortable but it will shed light on their true capabilities.
Bring in a fellow interviewer. With two people conducting the interview, one of you can focus on asking the right questions and the other can listen attentively to responses.
Test them. It is common practice within the foodservice industry to have a physical test for cooks and service staff. If you are hiring a line cook, give them a recipe to follow, and let them show you how they prepare it. You may even want to eliminate particular ingredients to see if they question you on it while tasting. For servers, have them role play with you. You play a problematic customer, and see how they react.

The Bottom Line

The interview is your chance to connect the dots and determine whether a food truck job candidate is really qualified to do the job. The right questions can make all the difference in helping you separate the contenders from the pretenders. And you don’t necessarily need to ask tough interview questions.

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Do you have any additional food truck job candidate questions vendors should ask? Share your ideas in the comment section or social media. Facebook | Twitter

About the Author: Richard Myrick

Richard Myrick is an architect by degree (Lawrence Technological University, Southfield, Michigan) who began his career in real estate development and architectural planning. In September of 2010 he created Mobile Cuisine Magazine to fill an information void he found when he began researching how to start a mobile hotdog cart in Chicago. Richard found that there was no central repository of mobile street food information anywhere on the internet, and with that, the idea for MCM was born. Richard also wrote the "Running a Food Truck for Dummies" available in bookstores everywhere and Amazon. You can reach out to Richard by email at: [email protected].