Inside Asian Gaming

21 20 he number of workers without jobs in Macau fell to 9,300 in the first quarter of this year, and the remaining unemployed are so lacking in skills as to be virtually unemploy- able. The intensifying labour crunch presents a challenge for any operator seeking to open a major new casino and hotel property in Macau. Recruiting staff of sufficient quality to match the glitzy facilities of the city’s first six- star casino and hotel property, Crown Macau, posed a further challenge. Crown Macau op- erator, Melco PBL Entertainment (Macau) Ltd, sought assistance for the recruitment of the property’s 4,100-strong opening workforce In-Demand Talent It takes considerable talent to secure top talent in Macau. Crown Macau turned to Talent2, a company rapidly emerging as one of the top recruiters and human resources outsourcing firms in the region – as well as the assessment and onboarding of staff – from human resources outsourcing (HRO) firm Talent2, the first end-to-end HRO solutions company in the Asia Pacific region. The Talent2 value proposition is not just re- ducing the cost per hire, but also the time to hire. Talent2 Director of Managed Services (Asia) Liviano Lacchia explained the brief: “It comes back to the [Crown Macau] brand. They wanted to see the first six-star hotel and gaming establishment in Macau.They have a vision of the type staff they want – not just in skills, but in aptitude, attitude, and presenta- tion. So we had to build that into our screen- ing and recruitment process.” Mirror image Mr Lacchia was also mindful that the recruit- ment experience for applicants had to mir- ror Crown Macau’s brand image.“Regardless of whether they get hired or not, the experi- ence of when they touch Crown Macau has to be good. That’s very important.” After all, even if someone is not currently “the right fit,” they could still be a future employee, or be able to refer qualified friends and rela- tives. Talent2 began work on April 28 last year in order to have the staff in place for “D-Day” –the Crown Macau opening on May 12. The company first dedicated a team to research the various job functions at the property in order to build specific talent acquisition models for each. As Mr Lacchia points out: “With these operations in Macau, it’s not just recruiting for one area. It’s recruitment for gaming, recruitment for hotel, for shared ser- vices. We had to take every area individually as part of a total project.” The core Talent2 team dedicated to the Crown Macau opening consisted of 10-15 people, but went to over 70 at the peak. “That’s the beauty of this model, says Mr Lac- chia,“because it gives you flexibility.You don’t want to put on 60 people at the start and get the client to pay for it when you don’t need them until three quarters of the way in. Our biggest intake started in November, and fin- ished in February.” In building the various talent acquisition models, Talent2 sought input from Melco PBL, and Mr Lacchia comments that not only is “partnering with your client” the best way to determine their staffing needs, but in the case of the Crown Macau recruitment in par- ticular, PBL’s experience in “running a num- ber of casinos already” proved particularly valuable. For each job function, Talent2 needed to determine “where do you get them from, what do you look for, what are their attri- butes, their aptitude, etc?”, explains Mr Lac- chia. Blackjack dealers, for example, “need acute mental arithmetic skills, especially when dealing with difficult customers.” In Macau, the government also restricts all dealer jobs to locals, which needs to be built into the acquisition model for that function. Macau first According to Mr Lacchia, “our aim was to hire first Macau residents, but then take best of breed from around the region. We received on behalf of Crown Macau around 60,000 applications, 41,000 of which were pre-qualified and registered on Crown Ma- cau’s talent database.”Of those, a mere 10% made the final cut, though the database could prove handy when it comes time to recruit for Melco PBL’s expansive follow-up property, the US$2.1 billion City of Dreams resort. According to Mr Lacchia, Melco PBL “expects a third of the people from Crown Macau to go to City of Dreams. That’s of- fering their staff a long-term employment strategy.The same as employees from Sands going to the Venetian.” The 3,000-room Venetian Macao resort will form the anchor-property of the Cotai Strip, where Las Vegas Sands Corp is spear- heading the development of 20,000 hotel rooms, which will require approximately 100,000 workers over the next two years.Tal- ent acquisition management and other hu- man resources skills will become increasingly in-demand, and Talent2 will position itself to fill that demand with the experience gained from the Crown Macau project, as well as its current task of onboarding the staff at Vene- tian Macao – essentially management of job offers and ensuring all the necessary paper- work is in place, background and security checks have been carried out, and the staff actually show up to work or training on the date committed to. Mr Lacchia asks: “So when the Venetian is fully running and City of Dreams and Ma- cao Studio City are about to open, can your internal team just do that [hire thousands of workers] by itself? It’s a reality now in the world – and it’s done in other areas outside HR – is that you need to collaborate with ex- pertise.” Mr Lacchia continues: “Especially when you’re doing large-scale recruitment in this part of the world, it’s a very costly exercise doing it in the normal recruitment manner. You can’t go to an agency that’s not set up for large-scale recruitment and say find me 2,000 people in Macau. It just doesn’t work, and by the way it’s going to cost you 25% per placement. In terms of doing large-scale recruitment, our talent acquisition model is set up to deliver in the most effective way, in terms of cost and ability to attract and hire talent.” Simply put, Talent2 offers clients “the ex- perience and capability to compliment and enhance an internal HR team,” according to Mr Lacchia. Gaming and Macau potential Talent2 sees tremendous potential for the region’s gaming and entertainment indus- try, and is seeking to position itself as the leading HR outsourcing firm in the field. Mr Lacchia also believes Macau presents a tremendous growth opportunity for Tal- ent2 – a company founded in Australia by two icons of the human resources industry (Geoff Morgan and Andrew Banks, who pre- viously founded Morgan and Banks, which had become the dominant recruitment firm in Australia and Asia). Talent2 is “aggressively building up the Macau-based business,” says Mr Lacchia. “We’ve built up skills internally to really focus on delivering to this market.We did a lot of re- search.We’ve got a core team of people who are very well versed now after twelve months to do talent acquisitionmanagement in gam- ing. Because it’s very, very specific.” Yet Mr Lacchia argues Macau’s“longevity” will be based on more than gaming.“It’s now becoming a gaming hub, and the next stage is resorts and the convention business.That’s the strategy of the Macau government with this,and if it works,it makes sense for us to be here long-term,because gaming will subside. It’s like Las Vegas, where the convention and retail business is now a higher-earner per capita than gaming.” So in the near future, Talent2 will be in- volved in talent acquisition management in Macau for“gaming, leisure centres, retail, F&B, hotel and MICE [meetings, incentives, con- ventions and exhibitions business].” Supply picture “There’s a lot of talent in Macau, especially on the young side,” observes Mr Lacchia. “It may not be as skilled, because they’re young. But in terms of level of education, it’s high.” While Macau’s workforce has potential, it lacks longevity of experience.“With the activ- ity now going on it is developing depth and breadth as in other cities,” says Mr Lacchia. Identifying potential in the absence of experience “really required a lot of work in terms of assessing people,” claims Mr Lac- chia.“Making sure they were the right fit.So it was quite a detailed and strenuous interview programme.” Mr Lacchia also stresses that “you’re os- tensibly at full-employment in Macau,” and as such, it’s a seller’s market for labour.“If I’m a young Macanese University graduate with probably an MBA, which is now the case, and I have previous experience, I’d be saying to every employer, “Why you?” A young, bright University educatedMacau resident with two or three years’experience has choice – for the first time in their life.” The race is heating up to become the em- ployer of choice in Macau. Mr Lacchia warns that employers cannot simply draw workers from competitors by of- fering higher salaries.“It’s wrong for the long term because all you’re going to get is cost escalation.”However, he believes“salaries are always going to go up now. It’s a given.” Employees are interested not just in sala- ries, but of course, also benefits – Talent2 had T