Hyatt Taps Into Virtual Reality to Hire 10,000 Young Workers
The unemployment rate may be at a record low, but there are still vast pockets of workers in the United States struggling to find jobs.
Global hotel chain Hyatt Corp. is tapping into one of these talent pools with RiseHY, its new community-hiring program, which uses virtual reality and gaming to introduce young people looking for career opportunities to the hospitality industry.
As part of the initiative, Hyatt hotels around the world have committed to hiring 10,000 “opportunity youth” — people ages 18 to 24 who are neither in school nor working — by 2025.
Opportunity youth often come from disadvantaged neighborhoods and have limited work experience and education. “Hospitality jobs aren’t even on their radar,” Schultz said. When Schultz and Williams-Lee began designing the project, they knew they would need to close that gap and find a way to help young people imagine building a career in hospitality.
To give them a sense of what life would be like working in a hotel, they worked with a vendor to build a virtual reality app, called YouVisit, where candidates can take a virtual guided tour of a hotel, see what workers do and learn what’s required of different roles including room attendants, hostesses, wait staff and concierge. “The virtual reality lets them see what their career path could be, and to think about whether this is a good fit for them,” Williams-Lee said.
See the full story here: https://www.workforce.com/2018/11/07/hyatt-taps-into-virtual-reality-to-hire-10000-young-workers/