Recruiting the right staff is a perennial headache for all types - and sizes - of tourism business.

We all have our favourite publications to place recruitment ads in, but are we casting our nets wide enough in today’s information-rich society? Some businesses think not and are now using Facebook and other social and business networking sites in the hope of landing the perfect candidate.

Today’s young people are the most internet-savvy generation yet, so it’s natural that recruitment spend should follow the eyeballs. This is not to say, however, that traditional channels have become obsolete. Far from it. Few, if any businesses, are currently recruiting exclusively via online networks so far, rather Facebook and its ilk are now an additional means of reaching out to the target audience.

In an industry that is constantly transforming itself, it is perhaps surprising that the process of recruiting staff has been so relatively innovation-free compared to the pace of change elsewhere in recent years. That may well be down to tried and tested methods working well enough. But complacency is never an endearing quality.

No matter how the business of recruiting staff may evolve though, some elemental truths never alter:
· the mechanics of the recruitment process should be simple and straight-forward for all parties concerned,
· and attracting the correct calibre of staff means demonstrating to potential applicants that they would be joining a good employer who offered something beneficial.

Of course, retaining staff in the first place is preferable to what can often prove to be a protracted process of recruitment. That, as they say, is another story for another day.