Tuesday June 17 2014

Increased media coverage of the restaurant industry is generating a rise in interest in pursuing careers in the field. In this new context, it is difficult for hospitality schools to distinguish motivated applicants from those who are simply following the crowd.

	Agnès Vaffier, headmistress of the Marseille vocational high school for hospitality and tourism: 'I don't know of any hotel management schools in France where the pressure rate is zero, even for restaurant-based training, which is less in demand.'

In its latest ranking of the best hospitality schools in the capital, the daily newspaper Le Parisien placed the Jean Drouant Hospitality School 11th out of 111 (74th out of 457 in the Île-de-France region). The school on Rue Médéric (17th arrondissement) also appears in the ranking of the most sought-after establishments in Paris, just one place behind the Lycée Montaigne! This demonstrates the growing popularity of hospitality education, in Paris as elsewhere. Agnès Vaffier , headmistress of the Marseille Hospitality and Tourism Vocational High School, interprets these figures as a consequence of the rise of cooking shows on television. The high school in Marseille is a remarkable observatory in this regard, as its headmaster has led the French Association of Hospitality and Tourism High Schools (Aflyht) for thirteen years. Aflyht represents 248 public and private schools under contract, accounting for 94% of students trained in the profession. Furthermore, the Marseille high school offers all levels of vocational training, from the CAP (vocational certificate) to the BTS (advanced vocational diploma), in both professional and technological tracks.

Rising pressure levels

The application rate (ER) corresponds to the number of students applying to a school relative to the number of available places. "I don't know of any hospitality schools in France where the application rate is zero, even for front-of-house training, which is less in demand," says Agnès Vaffier, who excludes private schools from her analysis. In Marseille, for example, there are 120 applications for 12 places in the CAP (vocational certificate) in cooking, resulting in an application rate of 10; an application rate of 4 for the CAP in restaurant service; 5 for the vocational baccalaureate in service; and 14 for the vocational baccalaureate in cooking, totaling 280 applicants for 24 places. But it is after the baccalaureate, in the preparatory year (MAN) – the pathway that allows holders of a general baccalaureate to join the technological track – that the selection process proves the most rigorous. "Application rates in MAN are approaching those of preparatory classes for the Grandes Écoles," states Christian Badinand , the headmaster of the Jean Drouant high school. “While there are many applications to enter the MAN (Management of Arts and Crafts), there’s a noticeable decline in interest in the technological track at the second-year level, to the point of calling its existence into question,” observes Agnès Vaffier. “Parents tell their children: ‘Get your baccalaureate first and then specialize in hospitality.’ The bottleneck is in the culinary arts track, to the detriment of front-of-house positions. And while all levels of study are overcrowded, it’s in the vocational training programs (CAP) that the dropout rates are highest. They are less academically inclined, less motivated, and less able to handle the discipline. But the dropout rate doesn’t exceed two or three students per class . ”

Investing in social networks

The influx of applications varies from school to school, without the quality of the teaching being called into question. “The hotel school in Saint-Chamond offers training as good as ours, but its location is less strategic than Marseille’s. Applicants also tend to favor established institutions. Those in Nice and Thonon-les-Bains are over a century old and are among the most sought-after! Many of today’s leading figures in the restaurant industry were trained in these schools, which are over fifty years old. If the pressure is skyrocketing at Jean Drouant, Lesdiguières [Grenoble], or Thonon, it’s also due to the strength of the alumni network, who are always more willing to give a candidate from the same school a chance once they’re in a position,” notes Agnès Vaffier.

For about fifteen years, selection interviews have been banned, presumably for greater fairness. However, they persist in some school districts under the name of "motivation interviews." These interviews aim to alert students selected by the Ministry of Education's computer system to the reality of what awaits them. It's a way to discourage those who might follow the system. But now, students are chosen electronically, based on their academic results and bonuses (social or merit-based, for example) through the Affelnet system after 3th grade and the APB (post-baccalaureate placement) system after the baccalaureate. "One might think that the higher the pressure, the better the candidates' profiles will be, but that's not always true, because the system doesn't take motivation into account, a key element for success in these professions. So, together with the Ministry of Education and professional unions, we are working on a solution to ensure that candidates' motivation is better considered in the bonus system." Thus, in Marseille, we have set up a 'restaurant pass' which allows a young person to accumulate points if they have shown their desire by participating in open days, mini-internships, meetings with professionals…," explains Agnès Vaffier, who considers the computer tools (Affelnet and APB) generally satisfactory, even if a son of a great chef with a promising future can be refused access to a hotel school because he has bad grades in mathematics.

In a tense economic climate where hospitality jobs are seen as a safe haven from soaring unemployment, those with connections might have reason to leverage them. Unfortunately for them, computers have stripped the head of the establishment of any influence in allocating places. "I have a letter on my desk from the mayor asking me to give special consideration to an application. I told him I was very touched by his interest in our establishment, but that the allocation procedures are no longer the headmaster's responsibility ," explains, under the condition of anonymity, the headmaster of a hotel located in a large urban area. " We still have one lever for intervention: the waiting list. We can move an application forward, but the applicant will have to fit the system's criteria."