Hospitality Rising surpasses 120,000 job applications

Recruitment campaign Hospitality Rising has said over 120,000 job applications have been made through its platform.

It comes after the industry-wide jobs board announced it surpassed 100,000 applications last month.

Speaking at The Caterer People Summit, Mark McCulloch, campaign director and founder of Hospitality Rising, revealed the movement has also raised £900,000 from operators, suppliers and sponsors to support the recruitment drive.

It recently received £30,000 worth of financial backing from Soho House and 450,000 people have viewed its job postings.

McCulloch added the campaign will be entering its second year of fundraising come September, which will be supplemented by two new mascots, one representing the QSR sector and another representing pubs.

He mentioned he might pause fundraising after that until they “get more momentum”.

The movement has also led him to reconsider the nature of application processes in general.

Speaking to The Caterer after the talk, McCulloch said operators need to make the application form “as frictionless as getting a Deliveroo, ordering an Uber, or listening to Spotify” in order to attract a younger generation.

Hospitality Rising launched last October in a bid to fix the sector’s growing job vacancies and change young people's perceptions of a career in hospitality.