BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – WITH expectations that the yachting industry would gain momentum, Christophe Harbour today (Oct. 26) hosted a Job Fair to fill key positions and the event had seen more than 60 applicants.
The exercise began at about 10:00 a.m. with the prospective employees being given a couple of presentation and a walk through of the Marina, so that they would be familiar with the space, its capacity, expected traffic, and resources needed to run the marina etc.
Christophe Harbour’s Yachting Director Aeneas ‘Nee’ Hollins, during an interview with this publication, explained that nine positions are currently available and that it was important as part of the Job Fair to have the participants familiarize themselves with the Marina and how it functions.
“We are doing a presentation where I show everybody the Marina. A lot of people haven’t seen it, haven’t understood it, haven’t been out here, don’t know what it means, even the word marina sometimes people don’t know…”
The nine positions, Hollins explained, comprise of four separate types of jobs: dockhand, guest services or concierge, fuel attendant and engineer.
He said these positions are pivotal to the smooth operations at the Marina and also for the comfortability of guests who visit the island via that means.
“With 24 boats in the marina, that can be up to 500 guests. That’s already a sizeable hotel impact on the island. All those people will rent cars, go out for the night, enjoy hiking, all the tours that are available, and we help facilitate that. Not just ourselves but we use all the island’s supplies too. We work with 140 businesses locally and those businesses come out and help us look after the boats.”
At the end of the tour and presentations, the participants of the fair were invited to complete applications which would be forwarded for review.
Akela Browne, Human Resource Manager at Christopher Harbour, said it was necessary to host such an event after response was slow-in-coming to published job ads. She said this could have been because persons seeing particular ads and not understanding what the positions were about might have gotten dissuaded from applying.
This Job Fair, she elaborated, is designed to give prospective applicants a first-hand view of working at the Marina.
“The thinking behind bringing them here is to give them a kind of a show and tell of what the job entails. We have some dockhands here, they can ask them what they do. So it is to bring them here and show them what the job entails, and that would help them to feel less intimidated and have a willingness to actually want to sign up.”
While all of the applicants would not be successful, Browne said the list could be a pool from which Christophe Harbour could choose as the need for staff arises.
