The Process of Employing Greek Ship Officers Onboard Greek Ships: A Proposal for a New Recruiting Tool

The employment levels of Greek seafarers have substantially declined in recent history, making it part of the phenomenon of the global shortage of ship officers. It is a complex problem with many and different causes. Human resources by rendering the competitive advantage of shipping companies sustainable, shipping companies needed effective hiring tools in order to recruit the right seafarers. The industry acknowledged inadequacies in institutional and organizational levels and the recruitment methods so far have been proven inefficient. This research aims at examining the recruitment methods used by the largest Greek-owned shipping companies during the hiring process of Greek shipping officers through a field survey. The survey revealed that the usual hiring methods used by crew managers were too simple for the personnel selection and proposes a new effective recruitment model. The proposal is depended upon different kind of constants and variables which are based on a dynamic database that can regularly be updated, i.e., with data such as the soft and hard skills of ship officers, in order to gain maximum productivity with the highest levels of safety. The research is organized as follows: the first section refers to an introduction of the portfolio of Greek shipping companies (i.e., their history, organizational structures, management practices, and fleet information) followed by a brief analysis of the Greek marine manpower. The next section discusses the factors that have affected the seafarers’ employment levels in the Greek maritime industry followed by the role of human resource management (HRM) and how it affects the company’s structure along with the analysis of the recruiting methods and hiring tools used by the shipping companies. Section “Methodology” describes the methodology and presents a flowchart that includes a new recruiting model and section “Data analysis and Findings” contains the data analysis and discusses the results. The findings provide the basic outcomes of the field survey and discuss the significance of them in regard to the research questions.