Hyatt seems to have taken the first steps in this direction with its year long contract with Hospitality Graduate Recruitment. The Swiss based recruitment consultancy will support over 110 Hyatt hotels with their recruitment strategies.

So what is the arrangement exactly?

According to HGR, ” For the next twelve months, HR departments across Hyatt International hotels in Europe, Middle East, Asia, Africa and South America will have unlimited access to HGR’s comprehensive on-line database.  The database will help Hyatt’s HR staff source and recruit suitable hospitality graduates and undergraduates for a variety of entry level, trainee, supervisory and junior management positions.  There is also a facility by which job opportunities can be posted.”

With more and more companies expanding rapidly, finding the right talent is certainly the biggest challenge facing the industry. Innovation and out of the box thinking will be critical for the industry in this area in the coming decade.

A comment from Professor Walter Jamieson of the University of Hawaii speaking at the PATA Annual Meeting session “Human Capital Challenge - It’s Time to Invest, caught my interest - He says “In travel and tourism we’re good at product and market development, but HRD is rarely central to industry growth strategies, and good workforce development strategies are hard to find.”

And it is high time the industry adapted quickly and made it a central theme…..

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