Career Seminar with the Hilton Worldwide

INLEAD recently hosted the Hilton Hotels Worldwide on its campus for a Career Seminar. The PACE workshop was aimed at making the students aware about the various career opportunities they can explore with the esteemed organization.  Hilton Hotels Worldwide, a renowned brand in the hospitality sector, is expanding its wings in a big way and is coming up with many career opportunities.

Established in the year 1919 in, Texas, U.S.A., Hilton has thirteen different   brands in its kitty. Mr Amit, Head HR, Hilton Hotels Worldwide, spoke at length about the different job opportunities which the Hilton Worldwide is providing to young candidates who are willing to join the hotel industry. He reiterated that, those who have the zeal and interest should become a part of Hilton family. He went to state that they have two different programs to cater for the young recruits. First is Management Trainee program of two years and the other is General Manager training program in which the recruits less than one year can apply. If the recruit passes he/she can become General Manager in next five years in Hilton and will get international exposure.

Mr Amit and his team answered every related question of students like recruitment process of the hotel, their marketing strategies, growth etc. and all questions were answered diligently. The session was overall productive and students kept coming up with questions. Students also got to know many new things about one of the top notch brands of hotel industry.

Prateek Bhatt, April 2016, INBM: “The talk was very relevant for all of us who have just taken admission at INLEAD and are therefore exploring all possible avenues of growth.”

Akshay Bhatnagar, October 2015, INHM: “It was a session which proved to very beneficial to me, since I am from the hospitality sector. I really look forward to joining this company.”

The Emerging Era of ‘App-cruitment’

Recruiting online in today’s times has not remained restricted to the various job portals anymore. Gone are the days when the recruiters would largely depend on the online portals (Naukri, Monster, Shine etc. to name a few in India) to filter candidates. The era of social media made LinkedIn and Facebook, emerge as considerably powerful tools to post job requisitions and invite candidature, owing to their widespread accessibility. However, when the world has become a shrinking web-space, how far can we go in the race for innovation? The answer to this question is ‘App-cruitment’ – recruiting talents using various Social Networking Apps.

Recently, Fetch, a Dentsu owned mobile marketing agency, hired an intern through a location-based dating app, Tinder. Yes! You read it correct! The same Tinder which many a youth today uses to hunt for a date. The agency created a Tinder profile in January to find matches in the New York City. Potential candidates were asked for their best pick-up lines. Fetch matched with 270 potential candidates and further shaved down to 5 personal interviews, finally hiring 22-year old Sam Weidt as an intern, rather being called a ‘Tintern’. In another breakthrough story, Droga5, a New York based global advertising agency looked for interns via an Instagram challenge. JWT India’s Bodhisatwa Dasgupta did the same using WhatsApp. Every year he would get calls from collegians from institutes like St. Xavier’s Mumbai, however due to geographical restrictions and lack of self-awareness among the aspirants, he was left with rookies who weren’t even sure about making a career in advertising. So Dasgupta turned to WhatsApp and gave 6 candidates a test fit for the digital age: create a meme – thereby not only judging their creativity but how fast they could deliver. The story doesn’t end there. JPMorgan, one of the world’s largest financial organizations is using Snapchat and its geo-filters to find and hire fresh talents. (Excerpts from Brand Equity: The Economic Times)

The reaction to this newly adopted ‘Swipe right’ methodology is mixed, across the HR fraternity. While some feel that these methods may appear ‘cool’ and hip for today’s app-crazy generation, they think it’s purely for branding and advertising purposes that such strategies are adopted. Moreover, they feel that such recruitments are ideal for the entry-level personnel and for start-ups only, thereby being impractical for recruiting mid-level managers or technical and finance professionals. On the other hand, many companies feel a need to think out of the box by trying to push the limits of innovative hiring. The question that remains: Are Tinder and Snapchat the answer?

- Sumit Chakravarty

   Faculty, INLEAD