Bocco Chen, senior manager of talent acquisition, Maxim’s Hong Kong discussed with c pjobs.com how revamp recruitment strategy will better deal with a new generation of talent.

What differentiates Maxim’s as an employer?

We are very focused and yet very diverse. We focus solely on the food and beverage sector, be it restaurants or food products like mooncakes. However, we are diversified, as we have different divisions of the business that encompass Chinese, Western and Japanese cuisines; we also have our bakery stores as well as being licensees for international brands like Starbucks and Shake Shack. Each of them is quite specialised in what they do. Because of our size and diversity, it’s very much an ideal place for talents who want to grow in the industry. We welcome people regardless of their skills, age, function, role and education, so long as they want to establish a career with us. Since 2013, Maxim’s has expanded beyond China, Hong Kong and Macau by making forays into Cambodia, Vietnam, Philippines and Singapore. Therefore, we need talents who want to be mobile and travel abroad.

What is the rationale behind your latest recruitment strategy – employer branding and career website to attract and engage young/millennial talents?

Some people still regard Maxim’s as a local family-run business with over 60 years’ history. Therefore we hope our new strategy will give the general public a better understanding of the company, as well as attracting the right people. We are a dynamic business with a regional reach. For example, in just the last decade the group has grown from 500 outlets to 1,000.

Nowadays young talents want speed, transparency, feedback and self-service. Our website bears that it mind – it’s not just a recruitment application website but a site for resource sharing, which not a lot of recruitment websites do. Resources that we share include job opportunities, online job openings with a sort and filter function, products and services, voice-guided tour of our facilities and F&B news.

How would Maxim’s prepare for the upcoming challenges, dealing with a younger workforce that has different a different outlook and career plans?

The working vacation concept has become quite popular in recent years and we are well aware that many of our staff are in the relevant under-30 age group. One of the areas we are investigating is how to re-engage people of that age. It’s like talent customer relationship management (CRM), as we record their trip details, such as where they go and for how long, so we know when to approach them on their return. Unlike other employers who ignore such overseas work experience, we can factor it in and credit their working vacation. Currently, we are exploring a programme on how to identify people who want to do this, and systematically re-employ them or even make the best use of the new skills they learnt abroad.

Are there any other plans or initiatives in the near future to attract more millennials and young candidates?

Our website is already geared for the future, i.e. chatbots do the first screenings and there are even video interviews. We’re also planning to use AI to augment the screen’s menu. So chatbots will be more sophisticated and comprehensive in years to come. It’s also like a CRM model – in future we can push job notifications as well. Besides the website, we do a lot of direct sourcing of talent, which is a fast-growing new trend. An in-house headhunter position was created in mid-2017 to search out talent online or make phone inquiries. So far this year, we have recruited 15 talents through direct sourcing. Positions range from senior management all the way to shop staff positions such as store manager, even factory production manager.

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Maxim’s new approach to revamp recruitment strategy

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