Death knell for Walk-in Interviews?

Everybody was quite excited when Dubai Airports announced they were hiring 400 new staff, and they did a really good PR job talking about the walk-in interviews being held at a hired out college over 3 days.

What came next was a PR disaster though, particularly in terms of employment brand. The problem was that the company was using pre-2001 tactics.

30,000 people turned up on the first morning to submit there resumes and meet recruiters. With no recruitment system in place to coordinate, store, communicate etc; the company was completely overwhelmed and had to get back on commercial radio and into the press again to cancel the event and tell people instead to go to the affiliated Civil Aviation website and submit applications online.

The majority of large employers in the Middle East are still operating this way, so no particular shame on Dubai Airports; I just wonder whether such a public failure may spur on other large employers to realise that using technology and websites to do the screening first is a no-brainer?

In a congested City like Dubai where driving is rarely pleasurable, I feel for the thousands of jobseekers who most likely took a sick-day off and drove for an hour only to find the doors locked on arrival.

I remember going through this with a client in 2002 whereby we helped them implement an ATS to pretty much run the above scenario online. The recruiters then flew down to the interview location. At 8:30 on the first day they called the office and said it was a disastrous turn-out; only 180 people where they would usually meet 2,500. Initially we'd been concerned, but asked them to proceed with the interview day.

Turns out they hired 60 people which was over their quota. All that had happened was that all the initial screening had taken 2,500 down to 250 qualified people who were scheduled to the interview online, of which 180 turned up.

Have we seen the end of the mass walk-in interviews where 90% of the people present are looking for a job but not the ones you're interviewing for? I doubt it, not just yet; but I think the lessons have been made very public on this occasion and I hope a few leading organisations think harder about the candidates' experience before hosting their next walk-in event.

(PS - I've linked the DCA website above in case you want to apply for an airport job)