In conversation with Kai Weller, Founder Managing Director, FIND Talent Group (Exclusive Interview)

What inspired you to set up your own practice (FIND Talent Group)? Why the focus on luxury hospitality? 

I have been involved with luxury hospitality for as long as I can remember. As a child I would spend time in my father’s restaurants in Chelsea and Notting Hill, often seeing them being built and then come to life. As soon as I was old enough I started to work in a former venue of his and have never looked back. You could say that luxury hospitality is in my blood, it’s something I am very passionate about.

After a 15 year career in the operational side I moved into recruitment and worked for some hospitality recruitment agencies in London for a further 5 years. I learnt different aspects of the business from each before deciding that I wanted to have my own approach and do things slightly differently. 

The luxury sector for me is the most exciting as it is the most demanding and the most competitive. People expect the very best and you need to be operating at the highest possible level every day to succeed in it. 

I’ve always been competitive and driven, and I’ve always wanted to work and surround myself with people who are at the top of their game. And this sector for me, is where you will find them. 

Which are the markets you are actively covering? Are there particular chains / groups you have been working over time? 

I am now based in London but cover the luxury hospitality market globally and work with clients from all over the world. The main focus is on 5* Hotels, fine dining/high-end restaurants, private member’s clubs and integrated resorts. Luxury for me doesn’t always mean it has to be ‘fancy’ but it does mean it has to be very good. 

The guiding principal for FIND is that it has to be a quality offering and that is what we are known for. The candidates we represent are at the very top of their games and this needs to be reflected in the clients we can offer them too, for this very reason I am more selective about who we work with. 

With offices and registered businesses in both London and Dubai we are well placed geographically in 2 of the most exciting regions for our industry. USA and Asia are also growing markets for us as well. 

I have also recently partnered with two very well-respected, leading figures in our industry to form House of Talent (HOT) which will focus on some very exciting projects in 2025 and beyond. 

HOT be working with some of the world’s leading operators to help develop innovative concepts with some incredible talent. 

How is your approach different? 

My personal approach is based on quality, integrity and delivery, as well as a first hand understanding of the industry and the roles I recruit for. 

Having worked my way up from a bar back to opening 5* hotels, running multi-million pound operations and teams of several hundred, I have gathered an in-depth, first hand operational knowledge of these businesses. Therefore, I also know what is required in most of the roles I recruit for, and what to look for.

I focus on quality over quantity and leverage a personal network of people I have real relationships with built up over decades, not just a database of names and positions. We don’t talk about the amount of people we have on a database, rather how well we know the people on a database. 

I also live and breathe the venues I work with; I eat in the restaurants, stay in the hotels and visit new openings every week. I don’t believe an office is the best place for what we do, you need to be in the restaurants to get a feeling for what they are really about and know what characters, personalities and skill sets will work best in each individual setting. 

I want to know what the food smells like and how soft the chairs are, as well as getting a feel for the energy of the place. 

It comes back to wanting to be the best at what you do. Everyone has access to LinkedIn, you don’t need to pay a recruitment agency just to send you names of candidates with similar backgrounds – you need them to fundamentally understand your offering and vision and then connect you with the most talented people that share that vision, and at the right time in their lives and careers. 

To do this you really need to be able to understand people on a human level, have real relationships and know what truly drives them. That’s where the value comes in, it takes time and skill, as well as being consistently tuned in to what is happening in your space. 

Post-pandemic, staffing has remained challenging for luxury hospitality, worldwide.

It created a big paradigm shift from the employer having more of the control to the employee being more in control, as companies now have to focus on selling themselves to a much smaller, competitive pool of candidates. 

The positive side to this is that businesses have needed to make themselves more attractive to the employees by creating more appealing working environments which will ultimately benefit the industry in the long term by making it a more desirable sector to work in. 

Another positive is that largely the people that are left genuinely want to be here and that is how it should be. 

How should luxury hotels motivate staff to minimise turnover? 

There are many tools hotels and other hospitality venues have to motivate staff – clear paths to progression, favourable/flexible working hours, great culture, competitive salaries all being amongst the most cited whenever you ask anyone this question.

However, for me the biggest impact to motivation is to recruit well and hire the right people for your company.  

If you surround your teams with the right individuals – all moving in the same direction, with shared behaviours, contributing equally and creating a positive mindset from top to bottom, then the rest will all fall into place and motivation will grow naturally.

Conversely if you make poor hiring decisions for your business then the rest of the team will feel this, it builds resentment over time, and all of those tools above will just become ineffective expenses to your business. 

The quickest way to demotivate your team is to allow people to remain in it that aren’t right and to hire people in that don’t want or deserve to be there.

Hospitality can be a tough environment, and we really need to recognise, protect and support the people that turn up every day and give their all. 

Having access to not just the best talent, but the right talent is absolutely crucial .

To what extent luxury hotels should be open to recruit from other luxury sectors? 

There is a growing crossover between luxury hospitality and other luxury industries. This is most prominent in the fashion sector where we see an increasing number of collaborations between major fashion houses and leading hotel/restaurant groups. 

Ultimately the approach at FIND Talent Group in both sectors is the same in that you are striving to offer an exceptional experience and make your guests feel special, so therefore the skills are often transferable too.

A lot of the hard skills specific to hospitality can be taught, what is more crucial is having the right attitude and positive energy. A real desire to impress, serve and make people smile. Real hospitality can’t be faked, it has to be genuine and the people delivering it have to honestly love what they do. 

What is your view on the trend of clustering certain positions? 

I am a strong believer in sticking to your strength(s) and doubling down on what you are best at rather than trying to do too much of everything. Clustering roles has come about largely through cost-saving measures post Covid and has undoubtedly helped some businesses through tough times so therefore can’t be discounted. 

The downside is that some people then step into roles they are not the best at and neglect more of the areas where they are.

That’s why I am a huge advocate of sticking to what you are good at and enjoy doing. 

I personally dislike sales and I’m not good at it, it was something that I had to do in my early years of recruitment, and it was really quite painful. Mainly because you were being asked to sell something you didn’t necessarily believe in to people that therefore didn’t necessarily believe in you. 

That’s also why I haven’t made a single sales call in 4 years since starting FIND and neither has anyone else on the teams both here and in Dubai. Not one. 

This means that we have to rely exclusively on word of mouth and recommendations, which in turn forces us to have to be excellent at our jobs, and deliver every single time. 

We spend 0% of our time looking for new clients so we can spend 100% of our time looking after the ones we have instead. 

Which roles are you normally covering in your practice? 

We cover everything from entry level right up to C-suite and from single, niche roles right up to entire opening teams in their hundreds.

Senior management makes up the majority of our placements. 

I am always really interested to speak with great operators to hear about their concepts and see where I can add value. There is nothing more rewarding than seeing successful businesses grow and excel in their space when you have played a part in building their teams alongside them. 

The deciding factor with any role we take on is I have to genuinely feel passionate about it and love the company first and foremost. As I mentioned, I’m a terrible salesman so I have to honestly believe in what I am offering. 

Tell us more about your most representative projects. 

There are number of incredible venues that I have helped bring to life with inspiring people over the years, as well as individuals who I’ve watched and helped their careers grow. This genuinely makes me happy. I got so much enjoyment out of my time working in the operational side of hospitality that this feels like a way of giving back and introducing others to this too. 

One of the projects I am very proud of is the work we have done with school children and helping to inspire the next generation. My colleague John Davey and I partnered up with a central London school and delivered a number of talks to the children there, telling them about our careers and the joys of working in the industry. We then took them on visits to some incredible venues to show them all the opportunities available to them if they decided to pursue a career in hospitality. 

Mainly they wanted to know if we had met Gordon Ramsay or not but a lot of them were genuinely excited and surprised at the scope of what you can do and achieve in our industry, as well as the range of possibilities available. Some are now working in internships with our clients which is amazing to see.

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