Key Attributes Waiters And Waitresses Need To Succeed In Their Career

by Jacob Brown

Tuesday, August 4, 2015

Waiters and waitresses take orders and serve food and beverages to patrons at tables in dining establishment.

The core tasks that waiters and waitresses are likely to carry out include:

Check with customers to ensure that they are enjoying their meals and take action to correct any problems.
Collect payments from customers.
Write patrons' food orders on order slips, memorize orders, or enter orders into computers for transmittal to kitchen staff.
Prepare checks that itemize and total meal costs and sales taxes.
Take orders from patrons for food or beverages.
Check patrons' identification to ensure that they meet minimum age requirements for consumption of alcoholic beverages.

In order to successfully forge ahead with their careers, analysts in a survey carried out by U.S. Department of Labor (via O*NET) have marked out the following as important attributes that waiters and waitresses would need. These attributes have been selected from characteristics and requirements strongly associated with the occupation. They are

Abilities: Enduring attributes of the individual that influence performance
Interests: Preferences for work environments. Occupational Interest Profiles (OIPs) are compatible with Holland's (1985, 1997) model of personality types and work environments. Six interest categories are used to describe the work environment of occupations: Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional. An OIP consists of six numerical scores indicating how descriptive and characteristic each work environment (or interest area) is for an occupation
Knowledge: Organized sets of principles and facts applying in general domains
Skills: These include basic skills, which are developed capacities that facilitate learning or the more rapid acquisition of knowledge. Plus cross-functional skills, which are developed capacities that facilitate performance of activities that occur across jobs
Style: Personal characteristics that can affect how well someone performs a job

We have listed out attributes which were scored 80% or more in terms of importance by the analysts.

Being reliable, responsible, and dependable, and fulfilling obligations.
Attribute Type: Style Score: 84.4%

Knowledge of principles and processes for providing customer and personal services. This includes customer needs assessment, meeting quality standards for services, and evaluation of customer satisfaction.
Attribute Type: Knowledge Score: 82.8%

Being pleasant with others on the job and displaying a good-natured, cooperative attitude.
Attribute Type: Style Score: 82.4%

Maintaining composure, keeping emotions in check, controlling anger, and avoiding aggressive behavior, even in very difficult situations.
Attribute Type: Style Score: 81.2%

Having a strong preference for social work environments. Social occupations frequently involve working with, communicating with, and teaching people. These occupations often involve helping or providing service to others.
Attribute Type: Interests Score: 81%

Accepting criticism and dealing calmly and effectively with high stress situations.
Attribute Type: Style Score: 80.2%

The ability to listen to and understand information and ideas presented through spoken words and sentences.
Attribute Type: Abilities Score: 80%

The ability to communicate information and ideas in speaking so others will understand.
Attribute Type: Abilities Score: 80%