A dedicated HotelChatter reader sent along a tip that there were a ton of jobs open at the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas. He writes:
Did something evil happen there? Other than the usual Las Vegas evil, I mean. A walkout or mass firing? Hotel manager, assistant hotel manager, spa director, spa manager, assistant spa manager, bar manager, rooms director... even the lead massage therapist and lead esthetician, both supervisory jobs, shouldn't be available at the same time. Something's going on out there and I'm curious. Have you heard anything?
Normally, we would say it's something evil that's going on over there. Except we found out that the hotel is opening The Palms Place Hotel and Spa in March 2008.
Every so often we like to look at the hospitality job listings on Craigslist, not because we want a new job, but because we want to see which hotels are hiring for what jobs and whether or not they make you send in your head shots along with your resume.
Schrager did this last year while prepping for this Gramercy Park Hotel opening and now, it seems as if they need a whole new staff. On Craigslist, the hotel is hiring for various positions including, room service waiters, front desk agents, cocktail servers, breakfast servers, housekeeping, mechanics and front desk agents.
The hotel also placed an ad for cooks for the hotel's long-awaited Chinese restaurant, Wakiya
Our new High-End Chinese Restaurant located in Gramercy Park Hotel will soon be having our Grand Opening and are seeking Dim Sum, Line, and Prep Cooks.
No word on when that restaurant opening will be of course. But Eater noticed that interviews for the restaurant staff also took place last month. Their opening guess is July 2007 and indeed the GPH site itself says July 2007.
It is safe to say that Scott Kerksman is one of the luckiest men in America right now. He's just been appointed (actually voted for out of 7,800 other applicants) the Chief Beer Officer for the Four Points by Sheraton's Starwood Brand. He spent a "whirlwind" week in New York, meeting all the Starwood hotel execs and even ringing in the bell at the New York Stock Exchange. Now, he's gearing up to tour all the Four Points hotels and host their Happy Hours along with hitting up Beer Festivals, and touring local beer breweries. "I think I've made a lot of people jealous" with this new job, Kerksman says in the understatement of the year.
Then again, life was not all that bad for Kerksman before the CBO gig.
A native of New Mexico, Kerks got his first exposure to beer brewing when his brother gave him a home brewery kit at the age of 21. (Legal drinking age, of course.) Together with his brother and a friend, the trio started experimenting with different flavors and after a while, Kerkmans felt confident enough to start working as a brewer at a local brewery where he worked himself up to head brewer. This set off a career of traveling all over to brew, including to Alaska where he was one of six brewers behind Alaskan Amber.
For the past few years, however, he has been working in Phoenix, Arizona overseeing the Draft magazine, a publication he co-founded with two friends, and judging beer.
The Full Q & A with Scott Kerkmans after the jump.
Scott Kerkmans is Four Points by Sheraton's newest Chief Beer Officer aka CBO and despite his youthful age of 27, he wisely knows that he can't have his MySpace page public for all the world to see. Darnit we were hoping for some nude shots of Kerks doing a keg stand or even playing beer pong in his boxers with a cardboard Burger King hat on his head. Instead we got a picture of a pick-up truck in the sunset and this quote:
"Many people fish all their lives, never realizing it is not fish they are after."
Whatever! Luckily we can put a face to the name, thanks to these promo shots of him in his newly installed position as head of the hotel chain's Best Brews program. Kerks is obviously the man for this job having started up the beer enthusiasts magazine, Draft Magazine, whose MySpace page is not set to private. Sadly, it only has three friends.
Finally after drawing out their worldwide search for Chief Beer Officer for nearly six months, Sheraton's Four Points Hotels have announced that a lucky 27-year-old from Arizona will step into this unique position as part of the hotels' New Best Brews Program.
Scott Kerkmans already rang the bell today on the NYSE, just the first step in his position which will take him across the world, cultivating and promoting the Best Brews at brewery tours, beer festivals and of course, good old-fashioned bars.
So what makes Kerkmans so qualified for this job? This:
Since the night his brother gave him a home brewing kit, Kerkmans has been extremely passionate about everything beer, from its production and pairings to sampling stouts and sharing his rich knowledge. ...
And this:
Kerkmans has dedicated both his professional and personal life to beer. This 27-year old Phoenix resident and former Head Brewer / Brewery Manager spent the past year starting and growing DRAFT, a national lifestyle magazine focused on beer and beer culture, in which he reviews this glorious libation on a weekly basis. He is also a certified beer judge who spends much of his free time seeking out new brews.
In the end, Kerkmans received 12,759 votes from people who thought he was the perfect fit. So now he will be off to visit each Four Points hotel around the world and oversee the Best Brews programs at each property. Beer lovers who didn't get the job can still pull up to a Four Points and select from nearly 300 brews in bottles and on a tap and dream about what coulda been.
Two months ago, Sheraton's Four Points hotel chain put out calls for a Chief Beer Officer, essentially a person who would travel the country testing out beers at beer festivals and overseeing the hotel's new beer progam, Best Brews, as a part-time gig.
And amazingly, the position has yet to be filled. So in case, one of your New Year's Eve resolutions was to "Find New Job" then you may as well cast your net here.
Yet, we hate to burst your newly found self-esteem (Resolution #3: Learn to Love Self), this job is still in hot demand. Four Points reports that over 5,000 applicants from 31 countries want to be a CBO.
MBAs (both Masters of Business and Beer Administration), self-proclaimed beer snobs, certified beer judges, beer journalists and hundreds who have traveled the globe in search of the world's best brews have all applied for the position. Over 50 percent of applicants have brewed their own beer and, surprisingly, five percent claim to have served as a beer mascot (which could make the interview process quite interesting!).
Our money is on Four Points hiring a female CBO. The folks over there say that while only 10 percent of the applicants were women, they all managed to score near perfect on the beer knowledge application test. We have to wonder, does the term "Beer Goggles" make it anywhere on to that application?
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by juliana
