About a year ago, a new hiring trend came into fashion. Corporations planning to employ a lot of people started organising recruitment days, drawing a big crowd of applicants. This way they could reduce costs, hire just one venue and save manpower and management time.
At the same time, the positive news of a large number of jobs on offer created a buzz among the public.
A new Mongkok hotel has developed this idea even further. It will have a series of recruitment days to choose the right staff and is also investing to design a 'fun' day that consists of a set of games to evaluate the candidates.
'When corporations say that they care for their staff and then get the potential staff lining up under the sun for a few hours waiting for an interview, I do not think these two really come together,' said Brett Butcher, the vice-president, operations, Australia and New Zealand, for Langham Hotels International, and general manager of the new hotel in Mongkok - Langham Place Hotel.
'An interview is the first time we meet the candidates, the first time we start motivating them, and I believe there is a better way of doing this.'
This new hotel, which will need 350 people when it opens in July, will use a slightly different method. Weeks before the recruitment day it put up advertisements calling for resumes and conducted the first round of assessments.
'On the recruitment day, we will meet the group of people we want to know more about. We expect about 600 people to turn up on the day for the 300 jobs that we need to fill.'