HK Express Wins “Best Global Recruitment Strategy” Gold Award at Asia Recruitment Awards 2018

It’s golden hour for HK Express! The Hong Kong-based airline scooped up a Gold Award for “Best Global Recruitment Strategy” at the 2018 Asia Recruitment Awards in earlier this month at Hotel ICON. Organised by Human Resources magazine, the annual award ceremony is the only regional recruitment awards programme of its kind. It was established in 2015 to celebrate the best in-house talent acquisition teams and recruiters across various industries in Asia.

HK Express’ “Best Global Recruitment Strategy” award showcased the airline’s sophisticated approach of recruitment during a continuous period of rapid expansion in 2017. To cope with the business expansion and fulfil manpower demand, HK Express operations team needed to grow its headcount by more than 30%. The airline’s Operations and Human Resources departments teamed up in 2017 to plan a series of strategic recruiting events all over the world.

To boost the cockpit crew headcount, HK Express held successful recruitment events in Kuala Lumpur and Frankfurt last year. The locations were part of the strategy: Kuala Lumpur has a large talent pool, since the LCC market accounts for more than 50% of market share. Meanwhile, Frankfurt saw an uptick in its available talent pool following an industry shakeup. As a result, these two joints recruitment activities contributed 33% to new hires for cockpit crews for the year.

HK Express approached cabin crew recruitment in a similar way. The airline’s business expansion strategy focuses on Japan and South Korea, so HK Express held recruitment fairs in Osaka and Busan last year. Both destinations have an adequate talent pool with competitive compensation expectations. Both events were a soaring success. Not only did they attract extensive media coverage, but the events also received more than 3,000 applications in total and confirmed 40 new hires in one day. The annual cabin crew headcount was increased by 10% through these two recruitment events.

 We are incredibly honoured to receive this distinguished award form Asia Recruitment Award 2018,” says Stanley Yau, Human Resources and Administration Director at HK Express. “We are always looking for new ways to better cultivate our team of talented professionals. We will continue to expand the business, and the operations teams, throughout 2018.