Etihad's hiring drives draw interest

Abu Dhabi: A recruitment drive on Saturday attracted the attention of Abu Dhabi residents as they witnessed an unprecedented crowd of young people.

"I used to see huge crowds here for mass iftar during Ramadan, near the Shaikh Zayed Mosque. But this was more than that because I was surprised to see thousands of young people queuing in front of the Etihad Airways head office," said a Mohammad Ramzan, 40, a Pakistani taxi driver who has been living in the city for 18 years.

The Etihad website had invited job seekers to a registration day on Saturday between 10am and 3pm for posts of cabin crew and ground service staff. Most of the candidates told Gulf News they had to wait for hours in the queue to submit their CVs.

"There were already hundreds of people when I reached here at 8am so I was not able to submit my CV until about noon," said Mohammad Ashraf , 29 ,an Indian who applied for a ground service job.

Some people had reached the office through word-of-mouth information. They said they reached the spot expecting an interview. "I waited in the long queue because I was expecting an interview for the post of cabin crew," said S.N., a Filipina girl. "But an official just collected my CV and said I would be called for an interview if selected," she said. An Indian girl also echoed a similar experience. The notification on the Etihad website said successful candidates would be contacted for an interview after registration.

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Etihad said that more than 3,400 people from the local community registered on the opening day. "More are being delivered this morning and we anticipate that more than 3,700 CVs will be received by the end of the day," Peter Carrie-Wilson, executive vice-president of human resources at Etihad said in a statement to Gulf News.

This year alone, the company has recruited around 250 staff each month - and this is set to continue as it grows its manpower resource to meet future demand, he said. "We have recruited over 5,000 employees since we started operations in 2003."

He said there was strong interest shown in cabin crew recruitment and they will be inviting a number of candidates for follow-up assessments.

"We have also scheduled more than 600 people for skills testing for ground services vacancies, and people who successfully pass the process will be scheduled for follow-up interviews."

He also disclosed that there were a number of applications received that may also be interesting for other current vacancies and they will be contacting candidates shortly.