Recruiter

Most recruiting roles in hospitality work like this: the recruiter surfaces candidates, the hiring manager decides, and the recruiter moves on to the next search. The recruiter is a facilitator. A coordinator with a sourcing function.  

This is not that role. 

At BHC, the recruiter is a steward of our standards. You are not a step in the process. You are a trusted talent advisor whose judgment helps shape the culture, quality, and guest experience of our organization, one hire at a time. This role carries meaningful influence across the portfolio and is central to how we build our teams. 

We are looking for someone who finds that responsibility clarifying rather than heavy. Someone who believes hiring is among the most consequential decisions an organization makes and wants to play a meaningful role in shaping those decisions. 

Who We Are 

BHC is a purpose-driven collection of hotels, restaurants, and cultural landmarks in Charleston, South Carolina. Independent and family-owned, we operate The Charleston Place, a 419-key landmark in the historic district; The Cooper, Charleston's first luxury waterfront hotel; and Sorelle, an all-day Southern Italian restaurant recognized by the Michelin Guide. We are also the stewards of the Riviera Theater and American Gardens, Charleston's newest public park. 

We do not think of ourselves as a hospitality operator in the conventional sense. We think of ourselves as the cultural catalyst of Charleston's evolution: preserving what matters, accelerating what comes next, and holding every detail to a standard that the city and the world can see. 

The people who work here are the experience. Every hire either raises that standard or quietly lowers it. Which is why the recruiter responsible for identifying, assessing, and advocating for talent is among the most important people in the company. 

The Role 

Culinary and food and beverage are the highest-volume disciplines in the BHC portfolio. You will own it entirely, across every non-exempt role and across all properties, from line cook to guest room dining supervisor, from a barista at the Sorelle mercato to a sommelier at The Crossing. 

You will not work for one property. You will know every BHC property and concept well enough to place candidates with genuine judgment. The energy Sorelle requires and the precision The Cooper demands are different things, even when the title is the same. That distinction is yours to understand and yours to protect. 

This is a pipeline role as much as a search role. The work you do between open requisitions, the relationships you build with culinary schools and hospitality programs, the candidates you are already talking to before the seat opens, is what determines whether BHC moves fast and smart when it needs to, or starts from scratch every time. 

DUTIES & RESPONSIBILITIES: What You’ll Do 

Set and Hold the Standard 

• Evaluate every candidate who enters consideration for a culinary or F&B role at BHC. Your assessment carries significant weight in every hiring decision. You will be expected to provide candid recommendations and maintain hiring standards across the portfolio. 

• Develop a clear point of view on what quality looks like at each level and each property, and apply it consistently. Not every role needs the same profile. Every role needs the right one. 

• Be the person hiring managers trust to tell them the truth about a candidate, including when the truth is that the profile they asked for is not the profile they need. 

Build the Pipeline Before the Req Opens 

• Maintain active sourcing relationships with culinary schools, hospitality programs, and community organizations. The pipeline should be warm before the need is urgent. 

• Know who is coming up in the Charleston culinary scene and beyond. Know which kitchens are developing talent and which are losing it. Know what is driving mobility in this market. 

• Build a bench of candidates who already know BHC and think well of it, so that when a seat opens, you are not starting a search from zero. Maintain ongoing outreach activity even when requisition volume is low. 

• Direct-source passive candidates through networking, referrals, industry events, social platforms, and competitive talent mapping.  

• Create talent communities for future culinary and F&B opportunities. 

Own the Full Candidate Experience 

• Every candidate who interacts with BHC through you forms an impression of the organization. That impression should reflect who we are: discerning, warm, quietly confident, and serious about the work. 

• Own the experience from first contact through offer, including candidates who do not get the role. How we treat people who do not join is part of our reputation in the market. 

• Maintain accurate and timely documentation in the Workday applicant tracking system throughout every search. Every conversation, signal, and candidate update lives in the system. Intelligence that lives in your head does not compound. 

• Serve as an ambassador for the BHC brand, ensuring candidates leave every interaction with a clear understanding of our culture, standards, and opportunities. 

• Occasional evening and weekend work, as well as attendance at recruiting and community events, may be required. 

Hold the Operational Load 

• Accountability for time-to-fill, candidate conversion rates, hiring manager satisfaction, candidate experience, offer acceptance rates, and quality and retention of hires. Speed is measured because vacancy has a real cost in a hospitality operation. Quality is measured because a poor hire has a larger one. 

• Run multiple searches at different altitudes simultaneously without losing quality or candidate experience in any of them. 

• Conduct structured intake conversations with hiring managers before each search begins. Calibrate on profile, pace, and priorities, so the search is right from day one. 

• Regular local travel between BHC properties, schools, community organizations, and recruiting events is expected. 

Partner with Operational Leaders 

• Build trusted relationships with chefs, restaurant leaders, and hotel operators across the portfolio.  

• Consult with hiring managers on labor market conditions, candidate availability, compensation trends, and talent strategy.  

• Influence hiring decisions through thoughtful assessment, market intelligence, and candid feedback. 

• Participate in workforce planning discussions and proactively identify talent risks and opportunities across the portfolio. 

What We’re Looking For 

We are not prescribing a resume. We are describing a person. 

Real Fluency in the Culinary World 

You understand how kitchens are structured, how careers move through them, and what makes a culinary or F&B professional worth calling. A chef de cuisine or a beverage director will know within minutes whether you understand their world. That fluency can come from working in it, recruiting in it, or genuine and demonstrable immersion in it. What matters is that it is not performed. 

The Confidence to Make the Call 

This role requires conviction. You will be asked to make consequential judgments about people, sometimes quickly, sometimes on imperfect information. You need to be someone who has developed a real point of view about talent, trusts it, and can defend it clearly to a hiring manager who sees things differently. Deference is not a virtue here. You communicate clearly, promptly, and professionally. Whether speaking with a line cook, a beverage director, or a senior leader, you adapt your approach while maintaining credibility, composure, and conviction. 

Taste 

BHC holds a high standard across everything it does, including how it recruits. You hold one too. You can tell the difference between a candidate who has the skills and a candidate who has the sensibility. You understand that in a luxury hospitality environment, sensibility is not soft, it is the thing that either makes or breaks the guest experience. 

Operational Discipline 

This discipline carries volume. You are organized, proactive, and rigorous about pipeline management. You can hold complexity without losing quality, and you bring the same care to a luxury fine dining server search as you do to a stewarding supervisor search, because both matter to the organization. You understand that recruiting is a business function, not an administrative one. You connect hiring decisions to labor costs, retention, guest experience, operational performance, and long-term organizational success. 

A Long View on Relationships 

The culinary and F&B community is smaller than it looks. Your reputation inside it is part of BHC's reputation. Candidates who did not get a role should remember how well they were treated. Professionals who may not have found the right role yet should feel that BHC is worth staying in touch with. That is not a soft skill. It is our market strategy. 

REQUIRED SKILLS & EXPERIENCE 

• Three (3) or more years of full-cycle high-volume recruiting experience with significant responsibility for hospitality, culinary, food and beverage, luxury service, or other operational hiring environments. Related backgrounds in talent acquisition, sourcing, or hospitality operations with a genuine transition into talent work will be considered. 

• Bachelor’s degree in human resources, hospitality, food and beverage management, or similar degree. Demonstrable knowledge of behavioral interviewing, talent assessment, candidate calibration, employer branding, and passive candidate sourcing, as well as the culinary and F&B talent market: career structures, compensation norms, key feeder institutions, and what drives mobility. 

• Experience holding candidates accountable to a real standard, not just qualifying them against a job description.  

• Demonstrated success sourcing passive candidates and building talent pipelines in competitive labor markets. 

• Comfort working with technology and applicant tracking systems like Workday and maintaining pipeline data with accuracy and discipline. 

• Experience in luxury or fine dining hospitality is an advantage. Experience working at any standard where quality was genuinely non-negotiable is what matters more. 

• Charleston knowledge is a plus. Curiosity about the city and genuine investment in what BHC is building matters more. 

What BHC Offers This Role 

We are naming this section deliberately, because we believe the recruiter's experience of this organization matters. 

• Meaningful influence. Your recommendations carry significant weight in hiring decisions across your discipline, and you will be trusted to maintain the standards that define the BHC brand experience. 

• Access to what excellent looks like. You will work alongside some of the most talented culinary and F&B professionals in the country, in properties that operate at a standard most recruiters never get close to. That access makes you better at the craft of recruiting. 

• A function built to support the work, not just process it. You will have the tools, the systems, and the organizational backing to recruit the way the role deserves to be done. 

• A long-term seat at a company that is building something. BHC is not optimizing an existing operation. It is shaping what Charleston becomes. The recruiter who builds the culinary and F&B talent base here will look back on a portfolio of hires that helped define that. 

• A team that takes this work seriously. The talent function at BHC is structured around the belief that who we hire is the most consequential decision we make. You will not have to fight for that belief to be respected. 

BHC is an equal opportunity employer. We believe that a team built with intention, diverse in background and perspective, produces better work and a stronger guest experience.