KMMG Hires 1,000th Team Member
Posted on August 18th, 2009 by Patrick Sands
WEST POINT, Ga. (August 18, 2009) — With the beginning of this week’s group of almost 90 new hires, Kia Motors Manufacturing Georgia, Inc. (KMMG) has reached a milestone by exceeding the 1,000 team member mark said company officials on Monday.
“Today marks a historic day for this company as we now have more than 1,000 team members on board,” said Randy Jackson, KMMG’s Director of Human Resources and Administration. “Hiring is still well underway and we expect to be at around 1,250 Team Members sometime during September.”
Jackson noted that it was last August when KMMG announced the hiring of the first 28 hourly production and maintenance team members from KMMG’s automotive record-setting 43,013 applications. The KMMG application process ran for 30 days between Jan. 8 and Feb. 7, 2008.
“All of our hourly team members went through a long process that involved giving up a lot of their free time in order to come to work at KMMG,” said Jackson. “It is very rewarding for each of them to reach this milestone in their journey to be a part of the Kia family.”
Following the application collection and review, applicants were brought in for interviews, testing and other pre-employment orientation steps. After making it past the interview part of the process, 40 hours of pre-employment training and assessment work took place at the Kia Georgia Training Center. This work was done on the team member’s own time and was an excellent chance for each prospective team member and Kia to see if they were a good match.
“Making it through our pre-employment process is not easy and those who do make it through should feel a real sense of accomplishment,” said Jackson. “We want to hire the best of the best.”
In addition to the new hires on Monday, KMMG also sent 46 team members to Namyang, Korea for two weeks of professional and cultural training. This is the second of three waves traveling to Korea this month for training. In all, KMMG has trained more than 350 team members abroad. The next group leaves Aug. 24.
Kia Motors Manufacturing Georgia, Inc. (KMMG) is the first manufacturing site in North America for Kia Motors Corporation based in Seoul, Korea. KMMG is located on 2,200 acres in West Point, Georgia, and is scheduled to begin production in the last quarter of 2009. At full capacity, the plant will have the ability to produce 300,000 vehicles annually and employ approximately 2,500 team members.
