Move and pick with Mövenpick

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Mövenpick Hotels and Resorts director of human resources Middle East and Asia Craig Cochrane explains why new recruits have genuine opportunities within the company's expanding portfolio.

What is the development pipeline looking like?

We currently have 21 operational hotels in the Middle East and Asia with a further seven in pre-opening and a total of 26 contracts signed for new hotels.

The majority of those are in the Middle East, although we do have a few hotels signed in Asia. We have just appointed a development director for mainland China and also a development manager for Asia.

I think that once we get the hotels that we have signed opened in the Middle East we feel that we will have our representation as much as we would like it to be. We have a hotel signed in Damascus in Syria which is one of the last countries in the Middle East that we needed to sign, where we wanted to be represented.

In 2012 we will have all these hotels opened and then the Middle East will be pretty much completed unless we have an opportunity to sign a real iconic hotel in a top city, where we might already have a hotel, but is too good to refuse. Other than that we are not actively pursuing the Middle East any further, so Asia becomes our next target from 2012 onward. We will be signing deals as and when they arrive though.

How does this create opportunities for the job seeker?

There might be an economic downturn in the United States and in Europe, but in terms of the Middle East it probably will affect top-line profit, but it won't affect hotels opening. So there will be job opportunities in the Middle East for the next four to five years. Not just us but all of our competitors as well, the industry is absolutely booming. Everyone I seem to speak to is opening hotels.

I did a quick calculation the other day and to service all of these hotels that we are proposing to open we are looking at 2000 people that we will need to recruit in the next three years, increasing to 5000 people in the next four to five years. It is a significant increase on the number of people that we currently employ in the area and is very exciting.

What will the split be between line staff and management?

In an average hotel in the Middle East you are looking at 80% of front-line guest service employees, another 15% of supervisory employees and then the remaining 5% is your hotel management and middle management.

What sort of people do you look for?

We have four core behaviours that we look for. It is how we do performance management in the company and how we select people to work for the company. Those four behaviours are trust, drive, relationships and entrepreneurship. The translation of that being that we want people to treat their job as if they were running their own company. We want them to be innovative and creative and thinking about what they are spending and whether it is worth it.

Anybody who excels in those areas - who is trustworthy, who has the drive to succeed, who forms effective relationships and is a bit of an entrepreneur - that is the type of person we are looking for. Coupled with that you have to be technically competent, particularly when it comes to more senior positions. For an entry level position into the organisation, having those four basics would be enough.

In entry level positions, the most important thing is attitude. If you have the right attitude, if you smile, if you want to do it then we will have a job for you.

In terms of what you offer your new recruits, what sets you apart from your competitors?

I think the greatest thing that our company can offer at the moment and a lot of companies will say it, but it is not always true, is true career development - with so many hotels signed and with the way that we operate.

We are a medium sized organisation and we intend to stay at that size. A growing medium-sized organisation can conduct talent management and career development more easily and more successfully than a large or small organisation, in my view.

So, the fact that we have so many new opportunities coming up means that anyone who joins Mövenpick can expect career advancement, realistically within a couple of years if they are performing well. Those opportunities are international; we are opening in locations all over the world and I think that is quite exciting.

I think about some of our competitors, who are operating a similar standard of hotel chain, but perhaps far larger, with thousands of units rather than one hundred or less. That means that you have 1000 food and beverage managers and 1000 executive chefs and 1000 front office managers and it is not possible to know that many people and to provide that many opportunities for that many people.

We are looking at perhaps 40 food and beverage managers across the company who are looking for an international career. It is a far more manageable number, it is possible for me to know 40 food and beverage managers and for that reason I think it is far more viable for us to give people career opportunities and to know who works for us.

I was talking to a colleague who works for another company. He recently attended a general managers' meeting and they had approximately 800 general managers. Basically everybody stood in groups and spoke to the people that they knew and it wasn't really an effective meeting. We had our general managers' meeting last year in Doha.

There were just over 20 general managers in the area team, so we were less than 40 people. It was a very effective meeting, everybody knows everybody, you can have dinner together realistically without it having to be a state function style banquet. It makes for a very healthy working environment.

What about the tangible benefits such as training and salaries?

Salaries are driven by the location. Every hotel is expected to be competitive with their local market. We wouldn't benchmark salaries in Dubai with salaries in Jordan, for example, because it is not relevant.

But we would expect the hotels in Jordan to benchmark with their competitors there. Benefits are standardised across the region. So if the front office manager is getting private health care in Jordan, then a front office manager in Dubai will also get private health care benefits. So it is really area controlled for benefits and locally controlled for salaries.

Our packages in most areas are comprehensive because in most of the areas in which we operate, staff are predominantly expatriates, so with accommodation, meals and laundry is all provided within the packages. Our philosophy is to be competitive in the local market that we operate within.

Our philosophy when it comes to more senior positions within the organisation is to have fewer people and remunerate them well. We may not have massive structures like certain other companies where you have four people to do particular roles, but we tend to provide packages to attract the people that we want to attract.

The main things that we have going for us as a company is that one, it is an international company. I don't think that I need to explain why that is an advantage to work for an international company - you have job security, a well regulated, sound financial organisation, which I think is reassuring to a lot of people who want to embark on a career.

We are medium sized, which means that you are not just a number, if you work for Mövenpick you are still a person. We have a lot of programmes that reinforce that fact. For example, all general managers who join our company are sent to Zurich, to our headquarters, for an induction programme.

Everybody meets the president and has lunch with the president of the company. It just reminds you that when you work here, if your name is mentioned people will know who you are. I think that is a really attractive thing about the organisation. Most people here are on a first name basis.

That is not the case in many other organisations that we compete with. We are serious about performance management and about learning and development. Anybody who joins our organisation at any level will have a proper opportunity to develop themselves.

As in any organisation, development is driven by the individual, but we have plenty of opportunities for people to do that. The future is exciting, anybody who wants to work around the world for a hotel company - we will be able to offer those opportunities.

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