Meet Julia Duchamp-Vignal, headhunter specialized in hotels and restaurants

Julia Duchamp-Vignal, Komaire Conseil headhunter, took part in the interview game: “Hotels, a profession, a meeting”. Thanks to her for taking the time to share with us her experience and her vision of the world on our sector.

First of all, can you introduce yourself and tell us about your career path?

My name is Julia, I am 29 years old. I come from a general sector, I have hotelier-restaurant owners parents so I was lulled by the sector. In parallel with my studies, I have always worked in the family business. I also did extras in restaurants.

After 2 years of law school I realized that my real passion was the hotel and restaurant business, so I decided to reorient myself. I joined the École de Paris des Métiers de la Table. I started from scratch by choosing a BTS in apprenticeship with a hotel management option. I worked at the Hilton Paris La Défense hotel, a 4-star hotel with 153 rooms, it was a perfect place to evolve.

Later, during my master's degree in hotel management, I worked in the Prime Minister's Office. I went back to logistical functions, purchases, protocol gifts. Finally, everything that revolves around the hotel and restaurant industry but applied to the public service and to the Prime Minister's Office at the Hotel de Matignon and in the 4 state secretaries attached to it at the time. During these two years, I worked on the implementation of an ERP (IT) to help manage & streamline processes, which led me to train nearly 70 agents and on many other transversal projects related to sustainable development or communication.

I finished my studies with a Master 2 in Innovation Management at the IAE in Paris in order to acquire solid theoretical foundations.

Following this experience, I was hired by MEWS, a start-up specializing in hotel PMS, and then followed my path as an independent person.

I also did a year of reserve duty in the French Navy because I have a fairly committed family and I wanted to discover this environment. In addition to a general background in defense and the navy, I was a logistics manager in charge of events.

These very different experiences allowed me to approach our job from very diverse perspectives.

What is the project/mission that impressed you the most?

I know that only one answer is needed but it is difficult with a background like mine where I have learned a lot in my various experiences.

The experience that took me out of my comfort zone was still at MEWS.

I went from a “classical” and fairly “formal” environment where I was quite comfortable (Prime Minister's Office) to a start-up universe where you could come in jeans and sneakers and where you talked to your customers. In particular, I discovered APIs and DATA.

This experience, which lasted 2 years, changed my vision of the hotel and restaurant business, I discovered a whole part of the sector that I did not suspect.

You founded Komaire Conseil, a firm specialized in hotel and restaurant recruitment. How Did You Come Up With This Idea? Who are your customers? What are the main challenges?

2 years ago I started a self-employed business after my experience at Mews, which ended after a major post-covid restructuring of the company. I was overused by all my past experiences and I felt ready to move on.

Initially, I decided to do nothing but word of mouth and take on all the missions that came up, regardless of the tasks. It could be creating a restaurant menu, participating in a 5-star hotel catering concept, managing PMS or even managing the social networks of a brasserie.

8 months ago I told myself that I could not continue like this, I had no real positioning. For a month or two, I tried to analyze what I liked the most and what made me like what I did. I told myself that there was no doubt and that it was the human. I always had to be on the ground. I also realized that I was always putting acquaintances to the right and to the left. Recruiting therefore came quite naturally. I did not want to do it like the big firms that existed on the market so I joined a network of independent consultants based on the administrative & training part (SOLINKI).

I work the way I want to, I don't take on more than 15 clients at a time and I sometimes say

“no” to missions that I don't feel comfortable with or that I'm not in sync with.

Since recently, I have specialized in pre-opening projects or atypical projects because that's what I like the most. Moreover, I don't really set myself a “framework” and I really work at heart with each project and each person who asks me.

Today what happens if I want to ask you for services to recruit someone to my team?

I don't even have a website yet (but soon!) But I am very present on LinkedIn and I have a small page on Solinki, which is the network that introduces me to and where you can make an appointment.

I work with as little administrative work as possible so in general I receive a message, I phone to define the need and we see together what we can do, in what form, at what price. I work in a very direct way, we frame the need together, I say yes or I say no, but if I say yes I go all out.

We can see that the sector is changing rapidly and that the difficulties in recruiting are numerous... What did you identify as difficult from a candidate point of view and from a company point of view?

We have lost more than 250,000 people in the profession since Covid. We had the sky over our heads. For me, it was something that had been hanging over our heads for a very long time.

Since I have a dad who comes from a professional background, we can compare our two schools. For him, if you don't work 90 hours a week and you don't have a life then you can't keep up in the hotel and restaurant trades. In fact, he comes back today telling me that this is not the right way to do it.

We exploded in flight because people realized that you can have a life, that you can take care of your children, that you can have an aperitif and that everything is fine. There is tension and a reversal of the situation because today it is the candidates who choose their company.

This is something that is a bit unusual and difficult to understand for some businesses that used to be juggernauts in the sector and who don't understand that people don't want to join their restaurant that closes at 2am.

There is a real pedagogical work, with each client with whom I collaborate we work together on the job description, the substantive issues and I have no trouble telling them that the salary is not appropriate.

We call it employer branding. These are things that are fundamental: such as compliance with the labor code. We have an agreement that is not at all suitable in the hotel and restaurant industry because it allows us to tend to excesses. It is not framed enough, we are working on the subject and things have changed but it is not enough.

Today I am fighting with candidates who”Ghostent”, which are overwhelmed with offers, therefore no longer have the codes of basic politeness: answering an email, introducing themselves, not sending a photo of their CV that they took out of the trash like a draft, having the correction of saying that they found something else...

On the other hand, companies that find it difficult to make the switch and understand that they no longer say to a candidate “Have you been in this or that hotel for only a year and you already want to leave? But why? “Just because you're offering them something else and you've got a better deal, that's all.

So a big part of my job is to put all this into perspective and that's also why I don't take on a lot of customers at the same time.

What do you think of the usefulness of digital technology in the sector?

For me, digital technology has taken us into another era in the hotel and restaurant industry.

We don't manage things the same way anymore. We automate a lot of things and often we have to take this automation as an opportunity to give back time to the employee so that he can focus on his core business, that is to say service.

Today, digital technology cannot be dispensed with, it offers prospects for customer journeys, automation and structuring that are extremely interesting, but I still think that it must be the consequence of a strategy.

It is a tool, a lever, because behind it we have a corporate culture, we have objectives, we have a salary policy and therefore we will use digital technology.

In my job (recruitment), I use it every day, I am a 3.0 headhunter. I don't do any physical interviews, I do everything remotely. I do voices on WhatsApp with the owners of the hotels & restaurants I work for. It changed my life: before covid, when I was self-employed and everyone did not yet have this habit, we tried to see each other again. I spent hours on the train, in public transport to see the customers.

Today, I live in Orleans, I have a garden, I left Paris, I do everything remotely and it is going very well.

What advice do you have for someone who wants to start a hotel business and open a hotel?

Congratulations already, it's a superb adventure!

Then it would be to surround yourself very well. Because it's not just recruiting, it's operational, it's your PMS.

If you want to get started and you're good, no matter how good you are, you can't be good everywhere. You really have to surround yourself according to your strategy and where you want to take this project from, because a hotelier who starts up must have a guiding line.

The real advice I have is to surround yourself with experts.

The problem is that a lot of people want to do everything at the same time and that creates consistently at many levels.

I think that there are enough motivated young and old people who are all experts in our field to offer coherent support.

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