Filling Out Forms at North County Fair : Those Shopping for Jobs Check Out Mall
About 1,000 people lined up for jobs Monday on the first day of hiring at the North County Fair regional shopping mall, but perhaps none was less typical than Jim Pohl.
Most of the job hopefuls were college age; Pohl is 66 years old.
Most of the job applicants were part-time students or were working part-time or full-time elsewhere. Pohl, on the other hand, is retired after having spent 30 years with Rockwell International as a structural design engineer, having worked on the F-100, the XB-70 and the B-1 aircraft.
Most job seekers wanted a sales clerk job, or maybe restaurant work. Pohl wants to be a security guard.
And while everyone else wanted top dollar for their labor--but would probably settle for $4 an hour and a store discount--Pohl did not want to make more than $7,320 a year--which he figured on reaching by working part-time for minimum wage ($3.35 an hour).
“I’m on Social Security, and if I earn more than $7,320 a year in supplemental income, I’ve got to give back to the government $1 for every $1 I earn. Now, that wouldn’t make sense, would it?” he asked.
Why look for a job at all?
“My wife works part-time at See’s Candy, so I figured I should get a job to keep me off the streets and out of the bars,” he said, laughing.
So he completed a salmon-colored job application provided by the state Employment Development Department (EDD), waited around in the parking lot for an hour until his name was called, turned the card in, went through a cursory five-minute interview with a job screener and, like everyone else, was told, “Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”
Hiring is off and running at the county’s newest mass employer--an Ernest W. Hahn-May Centers Development Co. partnership where ultimately 2,500 people will be on the payroll: sales clerks, restaurant cooks, secretaries, waitresses, janitors, cashiers, bookkeepers, janitors . . . and security guards.
In years past, a job seeker would go from one store’s personnel office to the next in search of work. But to simplify matters here--as it did for hiring at Horton Plaza in downtown San Diego last year--EDD opened a hiring center in the northeast corner parking lot of the nearly completed shopping mall.
The hiring trailer serves as a sort of one-stop employment screening office for all six major department stores (The Broadway, May Co., Sears, Robinson’s, Nordstrom and JC Penney) and the 180 smaller mall stores. In addition, Robinson’s has opened its own hiring office in Rancho Bernardo while The Broadway and May Co. on Monday began hiring from temporary personnel offices in the mall. Some job aspirants filled out applications not only at the EDD office but at the individual department stores as well, seeking to cover all the bases.
William Burris, manager of the EDD hiring center, estimated that 5,000 people will seek jobs through his office during the next three months and that the advantage would go to the early birds since some stores already have begun hiring.
Indeed, even though the trailer wasn’t scheduled to open until 9 a.m. Monday, more than 50 people were outside at 7:30 a.m., and Burris’ staff of six interviewers began handing out application cards an hour earlier than scheduled.
At any time during the day, 50 to 100 people were outside the trailer, waiting to turn in their job applications and run through a five-minute interview.
Each application was coded according to job classification (sales clerk, waitress and so on), and the interviews fleshed out further information that might prove valuable to employers, including job background. Twenty-two-year-old Tammy Guidry, for instance, mentioned to interviewer Lori Page that she had sold jewelry but would accept any sales job--and would even consider waitressing if no sales jobs were available.
EDD officials would file the job applications, and deal them out to the personnel managers of the various stores upon request. People who look good on paper will then be called back by the EDD and directed to the interested store for the hiring interview.
Job seekers were told Monday that they might not get a call for three or four weeks depending on the job they sought and how soon the stores began hiring. For others, hiring moved along more quickly--such as the woman with a college degree in marketing who was sent immediately to The Broadway and, according to Burris, probably would have a job before the end of the day.
“There’s never a tougher job than finding a job,” Burris remarked, as scores of people milled outside his temporary office.
Still, there wasn’t the scurrying for jobs at North County Fair that there was at Horton Plaza, Burris said.
Compared to the 5,000 people he expects to seek the 2,500 part- and full-time jobs here, he said about 12,000 applied for about 2,000 jobs at Horton Plaza.
The reason for the difference, he said, is that the unemployment rate in the Escondido region is about 5%, compared to upwards of 7% in San Diego, which also has a much higher population base.
“There’s a lot going on up here in North County, including several smaller shopping centers that have recently opened up,” Burris said. “But it’s just not economically feasible for people in San Diego to drive this far north for a job in retail.”
As a result, the local jobs are going to the local residents, he said, and there aren’t all that many local residents in need of jobs.
Among those looking for jobs Monday were Sandra Whitaker of Poway, who works at K mart and wants to work in a bigger and fancier store; Matti Taylor, who lives in Rancho Bernardo and wants to find a job closer to home than the one she now has in Carlsbad; Emily Tatich, who is writing and illustrating a book on animals and needs some income to see her through publication, and Cindy Kimble of Ramona, whose five children are in school and who wants to make some “mad money” for a new car and a new refrigerator.
Burris said he had expected to handle 500 job applicants Monday and was surprised when the number hit 1,000 at 5 p.m. “It seems that a lot of people are excited about this shopping center because of the kinds of stores that are coming in. They want to work here and be a part of it,” he said. “A lot of them already have jobs elsewhere, but they see working here as a step up.”
Robinson’s and Sears, along with the 180 mall stores, will open Feb. 20; May Co. and The Broadway will open a week early, on Feb. 13. Nordstrom will open Aug. 15 and Penney’s will open Nov. 5.
