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Help Wanted

The Rule-breaking Guide to Hiring an Extraordinary Team of Hospitality Alchemists

Hiring is Your Brand’s First Act of Hospitality

If your interviews feel transactional, scripted and soulless, you are stuck with a broken system.

This book exists because hiring by the book no longer works.

Help Wanted isn’t just another HR Manual. It’s an ALT-HR manifesto and an unconventional interviewing guide for leaders who believe that genuine, memorable hospitality starts long before the first guest checks in. It begins in-house, with how you hire.

Brimming with real-life stories and field-tested strategies from a true HR trailblazer, it transforms the traditional interview into a human-led experience. It shows you how to spot the Super Skills that bring your hospitality brand to life.

Inside, you’ll get your hands on unconventional frameworks and a radically human approach to recruitment designed for independent, boutique hospitality brands that refuse to play by the old rules.

This is not about throwing out everything you know about interviewing. It’s about finally hiring for what actually matters and will last.

Help Wanted is the secret sauce recipe book you need for hiring human magic.

 

Join the Wait List!

Help Wanted arrives January 2026. Join the waitlist to be the first to receive:
A FREE copy of chapter 1 immediately.
First access to the book launch special offers.
Occasional updates from Nicole and Banana Pepper HR.

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What You’ll Find Inside…

Help Wanted is both an ALT-HR manifesto and a practical guide.

You’ll learn to…

  • Look beyond soft skills to unearth the super skills that spark human magic

  • Ask story-rich questions that reveal character, not rehearsed answers

  • Hire people who bring presence and authentic hospitality to every interaction

  • Craft a culture that thrives on connection over compliance

  • Build remarkable teams that create unforgettable guest experiences and brand stories

If you’re exhausted by the hiring hamster wheel – the same old interviews, delivering the same old results – this book was written for you.

See you on the inside.

What Readers Are Saying

It is the brave few who have the nerve to go up against a system that is fully entrenched but clearly not working. That is what my brilliant friend Nicole has done in the way she has built and led teams in the hospitality sector. 
— Patrice Gordon, International Speaker, Author, & Coach, CEO Eminere Ltd.
Help Wanted is a breath of fresh air in a world of stale HR doctrine. It refuses to treat people as data points or hospitality as performance. Instead, it reclaims the soul of service – the spark that turns ordinary encounters into unforgettable experiences.
— David Carruthers, hospitality strategist and mentor, and founder, Future of Hospitality
If you want to build a profitable business as a force for good and dare to be different, this book is for you – because mavericks hire for impact: people, community, and the planet.
— Michael Tingsager, host and creator of the Hospitality Mavericks podcast and Head of Customer Experience, noon
Every hospitality leader needs to read Help Wanted because doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is, as they say, the definition of insanity. Nicole has always been an HR rebel, and in her exciting new book, she shows from experience how we can all break free from tired recruitment norms and create our own human magic.
— Lizzie Bullen, Group People and Culture Director, Iconic Luxury Hotels
 

About the Author

Nicole Antonio-Gadsdon is an HR innovator and interventionist, Human Magic Hiring Architect, and founder of Banana Pepper HR. Through her ALT-HR consultancy, she designs full-flavour, human-first employer branding and people strategies for boutique luxury hospitality businesses to create cultures people feel, teams guests remember, and brands no competitor can copy.

Born in Antigua, raised in the UK and rooted in Caribbean culture, Nicole has spent over twenty years reframing HR through a lens of creativity, authenticity, and jazz-inspired improvisation.

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Get Started with Help Wanted

Step 1

Join the wait list and receive a FREE preview copy of Chapter One.

Step 2

Be the first to know Help Wanted’s official launch date in January 2026.

Step 3

Get first dibs on special offers in January 2026.

Get Started