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Some holiday-job hunters find year-round gift
By Grace Wyler
boardman
After months of job searching, Kendall Johnson, a 20-year-old from Youngstown, found a temporary seasonal position at Target in the Shops at Boardman Park. But Johnson got an early gift this year when the store told him they wanted him to stay on as a year-round employee.
“This is my first job, so I was just looking for a good work environment,” Johnson said. “I heard it would get real busy, but it’s been fun.”
Like Johnson, a growing number of retail employees have found that holiday jobs can be the gateway to permanent employment.
Target hired about 100 seasonal workers this year, which was about the same as in 2009, said store manager Shannon Davis. Target typically does the bulk of its hiring in October and November, using the holiday season as a trial run to find year-round employees. “We are looking for someone who is looking for a permanent job,” said Davis. “Usually, we keep on about 25 to 50 percent of the people that we hire for seasonal jobs.”
Across the plaza, Ross Lopez of Poland would like his holiday job at Old Navy to turn into something more permanent. Lopez, a 19-year-old student at Youngstown State University, took a holiday job to earn some extra cash for the holidays and gain work experience.
“I am pretty into fashion,” the business-management major said. “It’s been a lot of fun, so I’d like to stay when I go back to school.”
Rick Fawcett of McDonald is in a different boat. The 35-year-old former high-school science teacher is in the midst of a career change and has plans to attend graduate school at YSU next fall. He took a job as a seasonal sales associate at Old Navy to help make ends meet. “For me, this is something to keep my head above water,” Fawcett said. He added that he would like to stay on after the holidays end.
Seasonal hires tend to come from a wide range of backgrounds, said store manager Tracy Ogden.
“We have teachers, people who have recently lost their jobs, people who may be looking for a new career,” Ogden said. “And they range in age from 18 all the way to 40 and even older, so we have people with a lot of different backgrounds of work experience.”
The Boardman store hired between 25 and 30 seasonal sales associates for the season to supplement a staff of about 60 permanent employees. About half of the holiday hires are looking for permanent jobs, Ogden said.
Old Navy typically will offer a part-time sales position to seasonal employees who want to stay on year-round, depending on their holiday performance and availability, she added.
“I would love to keep on everybody, but obviously I can’t have a staff of 80 people for this store,” she said.
Although this year’s seasonal hires are similar to those of past years, Ogden said she has noticed more people seem to be looking for holiday jobs as an additional source of cash.
“During the interview process, it seemed like maybe this year there were more people looking for a supplemental income,” she said. “Maybe they had a job, but their husband lost their job, and situations like that.”
The hiring numbers are “about typical,” said Melissa Hotem, Old Navy’s Ohio East district manager. The store hired about the same number of seasonal workers for the 2009 holiday season, Hotem said.
The Boardman store is only 12,000 square feet, so 80 or 90 employees are about the maximum number of workers the store can employ without crowding the sales floor, she added.
Holiday employment at the Old Navy store in Niles also remained level with 2009, Hotem said. That store, which has between 35 and 40 permanent workers, hired about 15 workers for the season.
Nationally, retailers did not hire as many new workers last month as they typically do at the start of the holiday season. The retail sector lost 55,000 jobs compared to November 2009, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. But the industry added jobs in October and November, compared to the same period a year earlier, indicating that holiday hiring may have started before Halloween.
Best Buy would not give out seasonal hiring numbers for individual stores. A company spokeswoman said Best Buy has taken on 29,000 seasonal workers this year, the same number hired in 2009. Other major retailers, such as Macy’s Inc. and Toys “R” Us, have said they are hiring more temporary help this year.
“A lot of retailers were bringing in extra staff at a pretty good clip this year, much better than last,” said Joe Bell, spokesman for The Cafaro Co., which owns Eastwood Mall in Niles. The company does not collect hiring numbers for individual stores in its malls, Bell said.
Even smaller companies are taking on extra help this holiday season.
850 Blues, which opened on Western Reserve Road in Poland this fall, has seen an increase in sales and store traffic since about mid-November, said owner Kristyn Stanislav. The store sells men’s jeans and other apparel, including high-end brands such as True Religion and 7 For All Mankind.
“We sell a lot of brands that they carry in stores in Cleveland and Pittsburgh but that you can’t find anywhere locally, so people have been really excited about that,” she said. “We have men coming in to shop for themselves but also a lot of women looking for gifts for their husbands, brothers, boyfriends, whoever,” she said.
The store is primarily a family-run operation; the staff includes Stanislav’s mother, brother and boyfriend. But Stanislav recently hired a part-time employee to help out with the holiday rush.
“Especially for the holidays, we’ve been getting really busy,” she said. Although the store is small, “it’s almost like three isn’t enough people to help everyone,” she added.
Stanislav, who is studying fashion merchandising at YSU, said she likely will keep the extra staff after the holidays are over so that she can keep up with the demands of school and owning a new business.