Recruitment days may be a growing trend for staff-hungry firms. The latest to line up potential employees in this way is SGS Hong Kong. SGS, which offers testing and certification services, held a recruitment day last week, following in the wake of The Hong Kong Jockey Club, whose recruitment day last month attracted long queues and a big pool of candidates. SGS Hong Kong managing director Helmut Chik Kwun-shing says the aim of holding the recruitment day was to meet demands to match corporate growth. 'Being a strategic location for China, Hong Kong acts as a procurement centre for most overseas corporations. We serve our clients by ensuring the consumer products manufactured in China meet international safety and quality standards,' says Mr Chik. A double-digit growth rate in the past 12 months has created 200 new openings at SGS Hong Kong. The jobs range from junior positions such as data-entry clerks to technical managers, who might require a PhD. SGS previously recruited a small number of staff by traditional methods, but this was found to be a slow and inefficient process. Assigning more than 60 staff for the recruitment day, the company had planned to screen and interview 3,000 candidates. The exercise met with a positive response, attracting interest from the media as well as from prospective candidates. 'This certainly created some noise in the market. However, it is only a by-product as our aim is to fill the openings to keep up with corporate growth,' Mr Chik says. The company views the entire exercise as a one-off investment. 'Yes, it is more cost-effective. Obviously, we need to pay for the venues and the public relations professionals. However, if the recruiting target is met the investment will have paid off. 'When we first looked at our expansion, we considered expanding in Hong Kong, Guangzhou or Shenzhen. We chose Hong Kong as we admire the quality of professionals here, since we are in a quality business. 'However, we were quite disappointed with the first quarter's recruitment, as our newly hired staff just come and go. We have a fairly high turnover rate among the younger staff. In this exercise and coming recruitments, we will hire more mature candidates,' says Mr Chik.