Checking Into the Hotel Industry

A career at Hyatt Hotels includes mobility, competitive salaries, advancement—and free hotel rooms

We all know that a week's vacation on the beach in Waikiki is a nice change of pace from life in a fluorescent-lit cubicle, but Randy Goldberg, executive director of recruiting for the privately-held Hyatt hotel chain, says many business students don't realize that a job in hospitality can be a lucrative way to avoid that cubicle forever.

Goldberg recently spoke to BusinessWeek.com reporter Kerry Miller about the opportunities for business students within the hospitality industry. Here are edited excerpts of their conversation:

	Randy Goldberg Hyatt

I think the biggest misconception for people that have not studied hospitality or worked in it is that it may not be a good long-term career choice. A lot of times people look at it and say, "Well, those are the food servers in the restaurant or the front-office clerks," and they don't think about the higher-level positions that we have in a hotel.

A front-office manager at the Hyatt Regency Chicago is probably making about $60,000 or $70,000 a year. A general manager in one of our average hotels is making over six figures, depending on the size of the hotel. And a lot of students coming out of the business schools don't always know about what that career can really take you to if you're interested in doing that.

What are some of the areas you hire for that would be of interest to an undergraduate business student?

We traditionally recruit about 300 students into our Management Training Program, and while a majority of the students we get come through hospitality schools, we also recruit straight from business schools. That's because while most hotel companies really only look for what we call the operations trainees, we also have programs specifically for things like accounting and sales.

While accounting and sales are going to be where most of the general business students go, we always get quite a few general business students that are interested in our operations program, which is a focus on either the rooms part of the hotel or the food and beverage part, because that's basically a management training program that can be utilized in all different types of areas.

What does your management training program entail?

The program length is on average about six months, and the first three months is a rotation throughout the hotel.

We have every single trainee work in every department and just about every position within the hotel. That means working at the front desk, working in sales, working in accounting, working in human resources, changing light bulbs with our facilities-maintenance department, cleaning rooms—it's a little bit of everything. We're trying to give them a full scope of what it takes to operate a hotel. After that rotation, the trainee would focus on their area of interest.

When they're done with their training, they're placed into an entry level management position, typically at the same hotel in that area of focus. So again, if that area is sales, that person is usually placed as an entry level sales manager. If it's rooms division, that person is placed either as an assistant for an office manager or an assistant housekeeping manager.

After the program is completed, what does the career trajectory for a new hire look like?

Typically the goal of the people that are going into the operations areas is to become a general manager of the hotel. So let's say I decide I'm going to go into the rooms division. I may start off as an assistant manager at the front desk.