What are Good Interview Questions to Ask When Hiring a General Manager?

If you are looking for how to hire a general manager for family entertainment center business, you must prepare a set of interview questions for your prospective candidates to assess if they are the right person for the job. This will also enable you to check if an applicant is a good fit for your company culture, your team, and your business. To help you ask the right questions that generate the answers and outcomes that you hope for, we talked to Embed's very own Kash Ahmad, Chief Management Consultant in Operations at NASA. Ahmad has over 25 years of extensive experience in the amusement and hospitality industry, including recruiting general managers for top family entertainment centers in the business. Choosing the right general manager for your FEC is crucial to ensure that your company culture has a steady footing: "A good leader can make all the difference. Different employees work differently depending on the manager. Taking the time to make the right selection for the manager you’re going to bring on board is essential. If you bring in the wrong person who doesn’t believe in your culture or plan, does not care about your employees, or doesn’t care about the business that much, it can really move your culture backward," emphasizes Ahmad.

Talent can come from everywhere. However, finding a culturally good fit for your family entertainment center's general manager can be quite a challenge. Company culture and values carry great weight in choosing leaders such as GMs for your team. Settling for just anybody can discourage good employees, run guests out the door, and cripple the energy to go to work. This is one of the reasons why you have to take into consideration where you scout for this role. Before you can start, you have to be prepared with some of the key aspects of the job hunt, such as the general manager's role, responsibilities, and the required skills and characteristics. To help you search for the right place for your FEC's next leader, we talked to recruitment and hospitality veterans David Curtis, Senior Director of Talent at Dave & Buster’s, and Beth Standlee, CEO & Founder at TrainerTainment. Here's where you can pool prospects for your FEC's general manager:

Looking for how to hire a general manager for your family entertainment center? There are specific skills, qualities, and characteristics that you need to be on the lookout for. Whether you have a mom-and-pop FEC or are already scaling into a chain, hiring a general manager is necessary and beneficial to keep your daily operations in check, your staff in their best professional shape for your guests, and your business in its most innovative and successful form yet. To help you on your talent acquisition journey for this vital role, we talked to David Curtis, Senior Director of Talent at Dave & Buster’s, Beth Standlee, CEO & Founder at TrainerTainment, and Embed's very own Kash Ahmad, Management Consultant in Operations at NASA. According to our industry experts, the following are the non-negotiables when it comes to hiring a general manager:

On revenue growth, the Harvard Business Review mentions that a lot of companies treat cost cutting as a skill - something that senior managers are competent on doing. However, if executives are asked to boost growth, they are left stunned. Total revenue tells a story about the business growth, but not the how. In this fast-paced and technology-driven age, family entertainment centers and other companies should unlearn cost cutting as the answer to revenue growth.

What do we mean when we say "FEC of the Future?" A family entertainment center of the future has the following tech-driven qualities: A revolutionized consumer journey A redefined revenue landscape A wider demographic Embracing emerging technology is necessary to achieve these. But before you can reshape the way your guests engage with your business and create tech-based revenue streams, you need to transform your operations and bring them to the next level.

The future is digital – even for brick-and-mortar businesses in the entertainment and amusement industry. It’s smart, automated, and high-tech. Today, we are getting first-hand experience on the benefits of rising technology. Light bulbs, refrigerators, security cameras – you name it – almost everything can now be controlled easily from a mobile phone. Since this is the case, consumers demand the same level of quality, convenience, and interactions from family entertainment centers.

Technology has shown a significant increase in consumer usage and demand as accelerated by the pandemic. Contactless and low-touch ways of payment and transactions saw a rise. Mastercard even reported a 40% jump on contactless payments as users do due diligence to mitigate risks.

To start a family entertainment center or family fun center, you should have a clear idea of the kind of business you want to have. Arriving at this decision means that you have already taken into consideration the market population, competition, real estate, drive times, demographics, and other factors at the location you are eyeing. You can check these in detail in our complete guide.

As someone who wants to start a family entertainment center, focusing on the guest experience is your main objective. To achieve this, you must ensure that everything is seamless for your customers – from the moment they step into your venue up until it’s time for them to leave. An integral part of this is an immersive experience outside your arcade game room and attractions – the interiors.

Your family entertainment business idea’s feasibility and success are riding on several factors. High on that list is the location. Where you put up the FEC will determine whether your venue could turn into revenue. You have two options in terms of location – you are going to either lease space or buy real estate.