Hiring programme offers cash rewards

Global property consultancy Knight Frank has re-engineered some of its human resources strategies to improve its recruitment process in a tight labour market, which shows no signs of abating for at least another 12 months. Placing suitable staff in ever expanding organisations has become every human resources manager's nightmare. Not only is there a shortage, but candidates are getting multiple job offers and commanding ever increasing salaries. Knight Frank is finding it hard to recruit surveyors and business staff for its professional property consultancy division. To ease the recruitment process, the company has rolled out a series of measures. Most recently, it launched its employee referral programme, which offers employees cash for every successful referral that turns into a hire. 'Backed by a strong economy, many companies, including us, have over the past two years expanded operations and have been soaking up the limited pool of available talent in the market,' said Johnny Kwong Fu-kuen, Knight Frank's head of human resources. Headquartered in Britain, the property specialist has businesses in residential and commercial property sales and leasings, property management, professional property consultancy and property valuation. Mr Kwong said the reward would vary, depending on the level of the job. He said it was difficult to say how effective the scheme would be as it had just been launched, but the company had already hired four people through referrals this year. Knight Frank also has a global recruitment system which stores thousands of applicants' resumes and documents from existing vacancies in the company's 165 offices in 37 countries. 'This is a bit like our own internal headhunter database,' Mr Kwong said. 'It can be especially useful when we are looking for senior professional staff and key executives who aren't easy to find in Hong Kong.' Locally, Knight Frank has a specific database which stores resumes of all applicants should suitable opportunities open up for them. The company has also stepped up its employment branding activities, which Mr Kwong said were crucial to spreading the word about the company. Top of the agenda has been Knight Frank's campus recruitment initiative for its two-year trainee programme, with the variation division and summer internships for university students. The trainee programme allows graduates to rotate between different specialist areas within the variation department as part of their training to become fully fledged surveyors. Summer internships offer students work experience placements, typically in the valuation and professional consultancy departments. 'Other divisions, such as our real estate agency and property management, require that people have substantial experience in the area so students are usually not placed in these divisions. 'A summer student who has had a positive experience with us is much more likely to tell their friends and classmates about it. We hope students will be able to spread our brand name when they return to campus,' he said. Recruitment at graduate level is also intense. Each year, only about 100 surveying graduates emerged from Hong Kong's universities, Mr Kwong said, adding that Knight Frank's biggest competitor for new surveyors was the Hong Kong government, which also required similar individuals to look after its properties and land. Over the past two years, several challenges have arisen as a result of the talent shortfall, notably higher labour costs. The company's salary costs have soared by 10 to 15 per cent due to fierce recruitment competition. 'The job recruitment cycle has also been shortened,' Mr Kwong said. 'If we see someone is right, we have to make our hiring decision quickly, and can no longer afford to wait to interview more people because so many candidates now have several job offers on hand,' he said, adding, the timeframe between the first interview to an actual job offer was now only about a week, in contrast to the two to three weeks under a more normal market environment. The tight labour situation, Mr Kwong said, was expected to ease soon, however, as a looming recession in the United States threatened the health of global economies, which could slow down growth plans for many companies. In Knight Frank's case, that would be translated into less work from multinational clients. 'Though we will continue to see a labour shortfall this year, I think we have already reached the worst point. We may see the tight market easing by the beginning of 2009,' he noted. Building blocks Launched employee referral programme at beginning of year Global and local internal human resources databases help with recruitment Building brand recognition through internships and trainee programme Company's salary costs up 10 to 15 per cent in last two years Tight labour market could ease by beginning of 2009