The SMX Convention Center of Pasay City hosted a job fair for the new Okada Manila, a casino resort that is expected to open this November. The job fair was hosted in an effort to recruit as many as 8,000 individuals to fill much needed positions within the facility. Okada Manila will focus on hiring local talent to fill such positions within casino gaming, marketing of the casino, facilities management, hotel operations, club operations, food and beverage and more.

President of Okada Manila, Steve Wostenholme, stated that the casino resort is targeting the recruitment of 8,000 individuals to fill positions before the soft launch scheduled for this fall. The goal is to hire more from the local area. Tiger Resorts Leisure & Entertainment is the operator of the casino who announced in 2015 that they would seek to employ domestically but only recently began to ramp up efforts to do so. More than 10,000 individuals took part in the most recent job fair for the venue.

In a statement, Wolstenholme commented that since the announcement of the new property name and the date for the official soft opening, the recruitment team for Okada Manila has been ‘bullish’ on hiring quality talent from the local labor market to fill positions for the hotel and casino operations. The group is happy to have attracted 10,139 Filipinos who had to undergo a rigid selection process during the event.

The first phase of Okada Manila is set to open this November which had a price tag of $2.4 billion. The second phase should follow shortly with all five phases of the project to be completed within a five year time frame. Once completed, the 44-hectare property will become the third integrated resort to open in Manila’s Entertainment City and be the largest of the three resorts.