BY DESTINY JOHNSON

Thousands of job seekers lined up at the Andre Rodgers Baseball Stadium on Tuesday as the first
day of the British Colonial Hotel job fair was held in anticipation of the hotels December
opening.
As this was a two-day job fair, General Manager at the British Colonial Dan McDermott said line
staff and hourly associates were to be interviewed on Tuesday, and on Wednesday individuals
were interviewed for supervisory and management positions.
With the large influx of applicants attending the first day of the job fair, Mr. McDermott said as
many as 1,370 people were interviewed, and that there may be a chance more than the
anticipated 300 jobs will be filled.
“You know, I think you have to understand from the hotel’s perspective, it’s not going to be 100
percent open at the same time,” he said.
Explaining he said, “It might be positions that we identify candidates that we bring them on a
little bit later as we open up certain restaurants, maybe trailing a little bit behind other restaurants
just because of normal operating and construction constraints.” He said eventually they will
bring everybody onboard that have been selected.
According to Mr McDermott, “The British Colonial will open early to mid December and not in
October as a miscommunication has suggested.
Continuing he said, “We hope to get people hired by the time we get through this process,
probably around mid-October we’ll start actually doing the real hiring, right now we’re just
screening and we’re finding great candidates.
Mr McDermott thanked the government for allowing them to use the national baseball facilities
for the job fair. “As you can see, there is lots of people here and I think this stadium and the
facilities are spectacular,” he said.
He said, “I think it works really really well for us as a central location; and I think the staff at the
facility has been unbelievably helpful in helping us orchestrate everything that we have going on
here today.
“I think the location being centrally located as far as parking and being able to have everybody,
covered under the stands if it does start to rain for some reason, you know we’ve got a lot of
different safeguards here. We’ve got great restrooms, great air conditioning during the interview
process, so I think it’s a nice environment in which to conduct a job fair like this,” said Mr
McDermott.
The second day of the job fair took place on Wednesday with equal interest shown.