Kinepolis Group, it’s all about entertainment!
The Kinepolis Group’s network of cinemas in Belgium, France, Spain, Switzerland and Poland offer modern entertainment to all generations. Spanning across 5 countries, the group of 23 cinema complexes, consist of 317 rooms and attracted 21.3 million visitors in 2011.
Kinepolis differentiates itself from other cinemas by letting the public enjoy unique entertainment activities and business experiences while continuously pursuing to exceed customer perception standards. Therefore there is a need for a large number of employees.
“Sexy industry” = surplus of candidates
Operations and local HR-activities are supervised from the international headquarters in Ghent. However, each complex has its own local HR department. This way keeping in touch with the local market makes it easier to anticipate the needs for each complex in each country.
For a long time there was no system to keep track of the number of candidates who applied for Kinepolis vacancies. As the entertainment industry has an attractive image, more people tend to apply.
Kinepolis looks for two types of profiles: the 1st type of profile is the movie theatre operations profile, for cinema employees to work at the register, at the candy counter, at ticket checking areas, as projectionists, in maintenance, as well as local management. The 2nd type are people who work behind the scenes to distribute the films, handle the rent and maintenance of the building, the movie theatre advertising, etc.
"Both our Belgian and international complexes attract a lot of candidates. That doesn’t require much effort on our part. Many people apply spontaneously, because they have heard from friends who know about Kinepolis, or they’ve seen an ad for a particular profile in our complexes and they respond to it. Until recently we received applications through different channels: by mail, by e-mail, at the reception in the complexes, etc. Therefore it was difficult to keep track of how many applications we had received, whether applicants had received a response and what happened with all the information," says Martine Kestens, Human Capital Manager at Kinepolis Group.
With the cooperation of CVWarehouse, Kinepolis can communicate with applicants in a more structured manner. Not only has this had a direct impact on the image of the company, but it also ensures that Kinepolis’ HR-team can focus more on working efficiently and can rapidly select the correct profiles.
— Martine Kestens, Former Human Capital Manager at Kinepolis Group
More efficient and rapid recruiting.
It became clear the existing recruiting policy had to be revised. Kinepolis researched how they could clean up the chaotic approach from the previous years. Together with the local HR teams they developed international guidelines which focused on “think global, act local”. Also Kinepolis’ general objective was established: Kinepolis must recruit more rapidly and more efficiently. That meant that it had to be easier to find the right person at the right place at the right time and with the right qualifications. The objective and the guidelines must also ensure the creation of a qualitative and quantitative talent pool of suitable candidates by means of a continuous flow of new candidates.
Online recruiting is not just a goal
Of course, that’s all easier said than done. Once we set our objectives, we needed the tools to reach those goals. Finding the best way to attract applicants was a challenge. CVWarehouse provided the solution. Their platform manages the flow of applications and frees up time for the front-desk. We’re now able to work more efficiently and our hiring process became more structured.
“In the future we’d like to expand our collaboration with CVWarehouse, but for now we still need to master the basic functionalities. The CVWarehouse team provides us great ongoing support in that area: they implemented the platform quickly and think in terms of their customer. They even make you feel you are their only client which is great added value. They provide the basics you need and found a very pragmatic way of working. Their approach seems to be a great match with our new recruiting policy and with Kinepolis in general”, concluded Martine Kestens.
