MBAs play poker in Vegas to win job at Caesars
hires against each other around a card table. But more companies are turning to this kind of "event recruiting'' to compete for top candidates, though job seekers are not usually required to pay to play, said Emily Taylor, who teaches career management at UCLA's Anderson School of Management.
“I think it's a great strategy by Caesars,'' she said. “The economy is improving and we're starting to see firms trying to distinguish themselves in different ways.''
Creative gambits also allow recruiters to establish a cultural match more quickly, said Lisa Feldman, executive director of MBA career management at the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business.
Last fall, a division of Amazon.com Inc. sponsored a Friday-night party for Hass students, she said. Neutrogena Corp. invites students to write essays about skin care to win admission to a cocktail party. And one real estate investment management firm in Newport Beach, Calif., flies standout students to a golf tournament.
These events are designed to tell a story about the company, Feldman said, and the Caesars tournament told one, too.
“The gesture of having a buy-in kind of says, “We're about real money,'' she said.
John Unwin, CEO of the Cosmopolitan Las Vegas, which competes with Caesars, said his hiring managers also like to observe candidates interacting with one other, but they create those situations without a mound of chips.
He said poker fit more directly in Caesars' wheelhouse.
“They love poker. They own the World Series of Poker,'' he said.
The game also seems to have taken hold in MBA
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