PARKnSHOP 'Supermarket Trainee' Recruitment Day
new career opportunity for young secondary school graduates

Hong Kong, September 23, 2003

PARKnSHOP is holding a large-scale recruitment day today at Hong Kong International Trade & Exhibition Centre, to provide secondary school graduates with 200 trainee posts.

PARKnSHOP has recently introduced a modernized operating system "Enterprise Resources Planning - ERP" to cope with its business growth. In order to match the development of this new system, it decided to launch this "Supermarket Trainee" program to recruit new talents and provide them with employment opportunities.

This is PARKnSHOP's first large-scale recruitment day, targeting on recent secondary school graduates. Ms Winnie Chow, PARKnSHOP Human Resources Manager said " this 'Supermarket Trainee' program can provide a good chance for those young graduates who are lack of working experience to understand more about the supermarket operation. It is very common that a lot of people may think merchandising on shelves is just an easy task, in fact, there are a lot of knowledge and concept behind it."

The 200 supermarket trainees will undergo a six-month training program, in which they will receive training on daily operation of a supermarket which included PC skills, in particular, operation and application of the ERP system, product display , shelving organisation and customer service etc. Except the classroom sessions, there will also be in-store training and coaching by experienced staff. Trainees will work five hours a day and six days a week. On-the-job training sessions will normally be conducted in the morning. Ms Chow explained that the half-day training allows employment opportunities for more young graduates and at the same time they will have more flexibility and time to pursue their interests or further studies.

After a six-month training and practice, trainees with satisfactory performance will be awarded with certificates and will have the chance to be employed as full-time staff. Well-performed staff will be promoted from the career ladder from store assistant to senior store assistant, supervisor, trainee manager, assistant store manager and even to store manager.

Though the 'Supermarket Trainee' is a short-term program, trainees can still enjoy benefits like
paid annual leave, statutory holidays and MPF. At PARKnSHOP, staff training has always
been an important part of its business. Trainees will not only receive the induction training, but also the hard and soft skills training. Ms Chow added while the market changes quickly and customers are becoming more demanding, our staff have to enhance their product knowledge and selling technique to keep pace with the dynamic market.