Greetings everybody, I’m a long time lurker and first time poster. I moved back to Canberra about 5 years ago after a happy and fruitful hospitality career in Australia in 5 star hotels (mostly food and beverage) .I was looking forward to coming home back in 2003, and hoped to gain employment in the field that I had plenty of experience in , both in the kitchen and front of house. However after 6 months and several “trials” and interviews I still found myself unemployed. I was perplexed and frustrated at the time but adjusted my sights and found employment in an entirely different field which I enjoyed.
To cut a long story short I am now looking to return to work in the first half of 2009 when my baby will be 6 months old. I am hoping to find work in hospitality due to the flexibility of that line of work and am curious as to what Canberra hospitality business owners are looking for, admittedly I am “old” 38 but have bucket loads of experience and take a great deal of pride in giving exemplary customer service. I suspect my down fall last time was my age, I will cost more to employ than a wet behind the ears 18 year old. I have been very dissapointed with the standard of service in the overwhelming majority of Canberras restaurants and bars and having read that severalof the regs here have had bad experiences with the service in Canberras hospitality outlets I would be interested to know, what I did”wrong” last time and what makes a good waitress / bar tender / host in Canberra.