IN a bid to gain employment, approximately 500 people turned up at the Jamaica Observer offices on Beechwood Avenue in St Andrew yesterday, to answer the call for new talent in various positions in the Sandals Resorts, locally and internationally.

Applicants showed up from as early as 7:00 am for the 9 o’clock start time, armed with their résumés and ready to take on the challenges.

At the end of the day, hundreds left smiling with the hope of being called, while others were sent home due to lack of experience or for failing the 20-minute written test.

Despite not being able to say exactly how many positions were available to be filled, Ingrid Emmons, human resource director of the Sandals Group, said that the job fair recruitment was a way of reaching out to a larger and varied set of people.

“Normally what happens with Sandals is that you have applicants coming to the hotels individually, but what we realise is that we are missing an entire market,” Emmons said. “So we want to change our recruitment approach which is what we do; we have job fairs like this and hopefully if this one is successful we may be in a position to have one either quarterly or twice a year. This is the first one that we are having in Jamaica this way.”

She explained that the intention was to filter the candidates so that while there might not be positions for everyone who was interviewed yesterday, a “pipeline” of talent was created.

“There are going to be some where we have opportunities immediately, which is why we have the heads of departments here doing the final interviews, because really they are the ones for their areas who will know exactly who will be successful in their roles,” Emmons explained. “Once we build up a talent pipeline they will always be coming back to those candidates who were successful.”

She explained too that a number of persons turned up who lacked work experience but who had a vast amount of potential. These persons were given an opportunity to get involved in the group’s Hospitality Trainee Programme (HTP), which involves six weeks of intense training, after which they would have the opportunity to apply for those positions.

She said that it was difficult to state the exact number of persons the job fair was seeking to find, since along with immediate positions, they were also planning to give opportunities to those who have worked in Sandals and Beaches hotels locally for transfers to overseas hotels.

“We just entertained some of our overseas hotels who have been here looking for experienced Sandals and Beaches staff and that is going to create some vacancies,” the HR manager further stated. “That is good because you get opportunities for promotions; you give opportunities to others who have been with us for some time to go abroad and that will create the vacancy. So right now we try to reconcile the number of vacancies that we have, but in the meantime what we really want to get a firm grasp on is where those talents are and we wanted to be sure we are aware of it.”

The areas advertised for which applicants turned out were butlers, food and beverage, gift shop, photo shop, entertainment, front desk, housekeeping, spa and watersports.

However, yesterday saw a large number of the applicants gravitating towards housekeeping and food and beverages positions.

“You find that they have a lot of food and beverage experience in Jamaica, and a lot of rooms’ experience, so any job fair anywhere, whether it’s Jamaica or Barbados you always have the majority of applicants for those roles,” Emmons said. “But then you have other areas where people have an interest but they might not have experience yet, which is why the HTP programme could be so good for areas like spa and water sport. Sometimes you have a natural interest but because of the standard of a Sandals property we would have to make sure that they have the right training before we could move them into those kinds of roles.

“The bottom line is you can start within the group. That is the magic of Sandals, you just need to get your foot in the door, work hard, and we will spot you and find you.”

Emmons said that while the job fair was the first of its kind for Sandals in Jamaica, one was held in Grenada a little over a year ago when the resort was opened there, and another in Barbados late last year. She said that over 5,000 people applied for the job fair in Barbados, to fill approximately 500 vacancies.