shoppingNsales

REALITY TV programmes are drawing in viewers these days and that was what Carrefour Malaysia came up with to entice young graduates to be part of the hypermarket. 

Called Carrefour Duniaku, the reality programme was an ingenious way of giving graduates a better understanding of the retail industry. 

The 12-episode 30-minute weekly show ended on July 22 with the finale conducted live at Carrefour MidValley. The youngest contestant, Abdul Mu’iz Abu Bakar, was announced the champion after a hard-fought battle with 23-year-old Yew Joo Jian. 

Throughout the 12 episodes, 12 selected young graduates had to go through a series of challenges and tasks and one was eliminated each week. 

“Our Carrefour Malaysia/ Singapore managing director Shafie Shamsuddin came up with this idea following the successful Apprentice series, but we did it the Malaysian way,” said Carrefour Malaysia human resource director Mohamad Fauzi Hassan. 

“We see a lot of unemployed graduates nowadays and many are not willing to work in the retail industry. 

“We wanted to do something creative and different to show that some perceived notions were not true.  

“We want to tell graduates that they can indeed build a career in retail, especially when we have so many different areas of specialty,” said Mohamad Fauzi. 

The contestants, he said, were tested in all areas of leadership and entrepreneurship since each episode focused on different specialty tasks each week. 

He added that of the 12 contestants, eight are currently working in Carrefour. 

The final result was announced by Shafie after deliberations with the hypermarket’s directors which represent 60% of the overall result, combined with 40% of customers’ votes in stores and via SMS. 

Carrefour Malaysia corporate communications and public relations manager Yuswanis Yusof said about one million viewers tuned into the programme each week.  

Mu’iz, a graduate from Universiti Tenaga Nasional (UTN) with a degree in finance, said participating in the programme actually opened up his eyes and mind to the real retail-working arena. 

Mohamad Fauzi said Mu’iz would be employed as a sales manager. 

Shafie said the show not only provided candidates on the job training but also helped them learn how to overcome trials and tribulations in the retail sector.  

Several renowned brands were also roped in for the programme, like L’oreal, Garnier, Maggie, Dove, Rejoice, Scotch Brite, and Lexmark printers.  

Source

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 14th, 2007 at 1:18 pm and is filed under news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.