The latest “The Games are recruiting” forum, organized on Tuesday April 23 at the Adidas Arena in Paris, sets the tone: 11,500 job offers were to be filled in this event co-organized by France Travail and the Games Organizing Committee. Olympic Games (COJO). If private security represented the majority of available positions (7,500), transport and logistics were looking for 2,000 people, and the hotel and catering industry, 1,000 candidates. Three months before the Games, the recruitment of seasonal workers is far from finished.
According to the barometer from the Kyu consulting firm, published Thursday April 25, job offers more than doubled between December 2023 and March 2024 in several sectors of activity: hotels and restaurants, security, transport, cleanliness , show. Needs are expected to increase further in the coming months, peaking in June. According to the OCOG, the event should mobilize 181,000 jobs, including 95,000 in these key sectors, which were faced with recruitment problems well before the Games.
Private security is clearly the area that suffers the most. While the OCOG states that “98% of needs are already contractually covered”the Group of Security Companies (GES), the main employers’ union, estimates that on the contrary there is a shortage of 8,000 people, or almost half of the minimum necessary for the successful holding of the Olympics (18,000).
“The basic salary remains insufficient”
VSEs, which are the majority in the sector, have had to adapt to this strong demand: even though events already represent 90% of its turnover, the company Aca Sécurité (Boulogne-Billancourt) has, for example, moved from 10 to 30 employees in one year in its offices. As for the number of temporary agents, often on permanent contracts and who also carry out fixed-term contracts to make ends meet, “we had 150 a year ago, now we put 400 to work to get them used to the events, and during the Games, we will put 1,000 to work, up to 650 on the same dayillustrates the director Thibault Dublanchet. Since September [2023]I only do human resources.”
The public authorities have certainly created a professional qualification certificate dedicated to large-scale sporting events, making it possible to obtain the professional security agent card in three weeks (instead of five). In Île-de-France, 20,000 private security training courses were carried out, and 5,000 new places were opened. And France Travail has spared no effort to encourage job seekers to join the ranks. More than 150,000 have been requested over the past year and a half.
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