COLUMN ONE : In Hiring, More Take a Chance : A severe labor shortage has businesses scrambling to fill entry-level jobs. Doors are opening for workers once thought difficult to employ.

Isaac Genis suffered a massive stroke one month before his 23rd birthday, leaving him with double vision and his left side temporarily paralyzed. But even after years of rehabilitative physical therapy, no one would give him a job.

Catheleen Tyson dropped out of high school 30 years ago to get married and raise a family. Ever since, the best jobs she could get were as a cook and as an office cleaner.

Steve Angel is 38 and considered educably retarded. His parents long feared that Angel, regarded as emotionally equivalent to a typical 12- to 14-year-old, would never be able to manage his own affairs.

Today, Genis, Tyson and Angel all hold jobs that, however modest, once seemed forever out of reach. Genis works in a department store receiving room. Tyson deals directly with customers in a sportswear department. Angel cleans a restaurant.

For their accomplishments, give credit to their own hard work and commitment. But also give credit to an emerging American labor shortage.

Retail stores, restaurants, hotels and other businesses have been scrambling lately to find workers who will settle for their low wages and yet do a good job. For many retailers, the search is as desperate as ever now around Thanksgiving and Christmas, the peak shopping season.

But the labor shortage is proving to be a grand opportunity for people at the bottom rungs of the work force, many of whom were shunned because of fear or ignorance: inner-city poor, high school dropouts, the very young, the elderly and the disabled.

A handful of ambitious employers are confronting head-on a major issue for U.S. business: the changing complexion of the American work force. On a daily basis, these firms are aggressively seeking out, training and taking a chance on workers widely thought to be hard to employ.

“You have to go where people are. If you have to go to housing projects and leaflet the doors, then that’s what you do,” said Roberta Joyner, manager of government programs for Ross Stores, a retailer based in Newark, Calif., that is considered a leader in hiring the disadvantaged.

Genis and Tyson both work at the Mervyn’s department store in the Glendale Galleria. Says store manager Alan Waters: “You look at people you wouldn’t have five years ago, and they often turn out to be terrific people. You don’t leave any stone unturned. You just have to look harder.”

The nation’s low unemployment rate of 5.3% has aggravated retailers’ longstanding problem in finding workers. Except for top positions, retailing jobs often have little allure--the pay can be low, the hours inconvenient, the work stressful.

Experts say that businesses are hurt, too, by the shortage of young people entering the job force now, due to the “baby bust” years of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Many of the young people who do apply have trouble filling out a simple form or adding a column of numbers.

Major Eastern cities, with their relatively stagnant work forces and longstanding inner-city problems, were the first to feel the pinch of the worker shortage.

But the phenomenon hit Southern California just about a year ago when retailers found recruiting Christmas workers tough going, said Jack A. Kyser, chief economist for the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce. He said the area’s low unemployment rate highlights the worker shortage--the most recently reported jobless rate for Los Angeles County is 4.7%, and for Orange County, 3.2%.

Low jobless rates notwithstanding, the latest figures also show that 6.5 million people nationally--including 240,300 in Los Angeles and Orange counties--lack jobs. Another 5 million Americans hold part-time positions but are looking for full-time work.

All too often, though, the job hunters aren’t interested in entry-level openings at stores, hotels and restaurants where pay ranges from the minimum wage--$4.25 in California, but less elsewhere--to perhaps somewhat more than $5 an hour. Many of those who do apply speak English poorly or are inarticulate in any language to converse with a customer.

At the reservations center for the Days Inn hotel chain in Atlanta, six out of 10 job applicants who take the company’s language test can’t pronounce or explain the meaning of the words “obnoxious” or “pronunciation.”

“That’s a sad commentary,” said Richard A. Smith, Days Inn senior vice president for human resources.

Other job seekers have severe physical or emotional handicaps that make them difficult to work with. An operator of two fast-food outlets in the San Fernando Valley said he had to fire a teen-age girl with a severe emotional disorder after she punched other employees and was nasty to customers, among other things.

Employers also complain that too many young, entry-level workers steal merchandise and have drug problems. Even more are prone to skip work or quit their job when the impulse strikes. “They want their free time when they want it, and they take it,” said Ron Biggs, senior vice president of employee relations for the Fedco membership department store chain.

Particularly in inner-city areas, employers “are finding unmotivated, drug-addicted people with poor educational skills, to put it in an unfortunate nutshell,” said William L. White, a principal in the Los Angeles office of the Towers Perrin consulting firm.

Unimaginative or even racially biased employers deserve some of the blame, too, for problems in the labor market. “There is potential that is not being utilized,” said Sar Levitan, director of the Center for Policy Studies at George Washington University.

More open-minded employers focus on finding the hidden gems already in the labor force as well as persuading housewives and retirees to come to work.

In addition, the recruiting often involves cultivating ties with a network of job referral agencies. Ross Stores, for example, works with Goodwill Industries offices, along with state and business-sponsored job assistance organizations.

Others are, at times, more adventurous. Days Inn has recruited homeless people from a shelter for battered women in Atlanta for jobs as reservations clerks.

Much of the necessary job training is supplied by the government and nonprofit employment agencies. But some workers from the fringes of the labor market need more help.

Marriott Corp. offers many of the disadvantaged youths hired at its hotel, restaurant and food service divisions about 40 to 80 hours of “hospitality training.”

What are the new hires taught? That they ought to take showers every day, wash their hands after going to the bathroom and not yell at their bosses in front of other people.

“We’re going back to the basics,” said Janet Tully, Marriott’s director of community employment and training programs.

There are limits, though, on how far even the most progressive employers will go to seek out or hold onto low-wage workers. When it comes to hiring people with criminal records, almost everyone balks.

“You bring up that topic, especially in the retail industry, and they get very nervous,” said Virginia Rebata, director of business services for the National Alliance of Business, a nonprofit group that promotes employment programs for the disadvantaged.

Aside from the up-front expense, one of the drawbacks of outreach hiring is the mixed response it gets from consumers. Marriott, for instance, gets lots of letters about its use of mildly mentally retarded workers. Some customers offer praise while others, Tully said, ask “why do you have these people here?” and accuse Marriott of paying handicapped workers exploitatively low wages. (Marriott says it pays the handicapped the same as other workers with comparable jobs.)

For employers who successfully reach into the recesses of the labor force, there are ample rewards. When the screening process works well, the workers who land jobs often are surprisingly talented, loyal and dependable--giving progressive companies an edge over the vast majority of firms that are less resourceful in finding employees.

Days Inn, for instance, reports that since it began actively recruiting retirees in early 1985, annual turnover at its Atlanta reservations center has fallen from 40% to under 23%. Not only do the older employees have a turnover rate of less than 1%, they also set a helpful example for their co-workers, company officials say.

But the ones most dramatically affected by outreach efforts are the people themselves who are brought into the mainstream of the work force.

Steve Angel, for example, was very dependent on his parents before getting his job at a McDonald’s restaurant in West Hills four years ago. Now he takes care of his own apartment in Woodland Hills and maintains his own checking account.

Sally Angel, Steve’s mother, attributes much of her son’s personal growth to the confidence he has gained on the job because of the supportive atmosphere and management stability at the restaurant. In previous jobs at cafeterias, Mrs. Angel said, her son was upset by turnover among his bosses.

For his part, Angel said he enjoys “being in a place like this, where I can have friends and people to talk to.”

The job wasn’t smooth sailing from the start, however.

Soon after Angel was hired, he was tried out as a cook. The tryout was a flop because Angel lacked the necessary hand dexterity.

But ever since Angel was shifted to his current duties--which mainly involve such chores as mopping floors, cleaning windows, clearing tables and emptying the trash--things have worked out well.

Donna and Steve Teck, owners of the West Hills McDonald’s, say they started employing handicapped workers five years ago to do something good for the community. By the time they hired Angel, however, they also started to recognize a financial payoff from hiring the handicapped--particularly in a tightening labor market.

“We feel a lot of employers are missing the boat with part of the work force that is out there and hasn’t been utilized,” said Steve Teck, a Los Angeles firefighter for 17 years before going into the fast-food business nine years ago.

The Tecks, who also own a McDonald’s in Sepulveda, now have six handicapped workers on their 150-person payroll. They expect to add more, but not quickly.

Steve Teck explained that fast-food restaurants need workers who can perform a number of jobs. That way, if one worker calls in sick, it’s easy to have others fill in.

Handicapped workers, he noted, often lack that versatility. Angel, for instance, does not take customer orders or operate the electronic cash register, and it’s unlikely he ever will.

“Knowing the point beyond which (the handicapped) are not going to progress probably is the secret” to their success, Mrs. Angel said.

For Catheleen Tyson, on the other hand, a new job at the Glendale Mervyn’s has expanded her horizons. When Tyson applied for work at Mervyn’s, she believed that the only chance she had was as a stock room worker.

Instead, she was hired in September as what Mervyn’s calls a customer service representative, and she now spends much of her time dealing with customers in the sportswear department and supervising the fitting room.

“I didn’t think I was qualified,” Tyson said. “I was pretty surprised.”

Not only was Tyson a high school dropout, she also had never been in sales. Moreover, she believed that her appearance wasn’t youthful enough for someone working on the sales floor of a department store.

At age 48, she is petite and somewhat weakened after having surgery last year for a brain aneurysm. Her head was shaved when she had the surgery, so Tyson wears a stocking head covering these days while she waits for her hair to grow back.

Store manager Alan Waters said, however, that Tyson has been a big hit, often drawing praise from customers on comment cards because she “goes out of her way to please.” He said Mervyn’s took a chance on putting her on the sales floor because of her “good-hearted,” outgoing personality.

Although Tyson once made more money as a cook--she now earns about $5 an hour--she says she enjoys her new job, particularly the opportunities she has to chat with shoppers.

“I like to stay busy. I don’t like to be bored,” Tyson said. “And in this job, you’re never bored.”

Isaac Genis, a co-worker of Tyson’s at the Glendale Mervyn’s, is happy to have any sort of full-time job these days.

Physically imposing at 6-foot-3 and 242 pounds, Genis is in improved, if not perfect, health more than five years after suffering his massive stroke. He still needs to avoid heavy lifting, and sometimes suffers short-term memory loss and has trouble keeping his balance.

But Genis, 28, a good-natured man who tells a steady stream of corny jokes, said he doesn’t consider himself disabled “unless it’s rainy or cold, and then I’ll take a disabled parking spot.”

A former chauffeur and tour bus driver, he began looking for work again early this year and received no encouragement for months. Genis said the worst moment came when he was applying for a warehouse job and the interviewer blurted out: “You haven’t worked in five years? Well, you won’t be working here!”

“I told them about my disability,” Genis added. “But they said ‘no.’ ”

Finally, on Sept. 7--exactly five years after he suffered his stroke--Genis got what he considers his big break. He landed a full-time job hanging clothes for $4.60 an hour at Mervyn’s.

For Mervyn’s, it was a break too. Hard-pressed to find a new receiving room worker, Mervyn’s eventually called a rehabilitation center for the physically disabled, asked for a capable job candidate and was directed to Genis.

Valerie Wilson, his case worker for the last three years at the Center for Independent Living in Covina, said Genis went through the same frustrations that many disabled people do when they try to return to work.

“He’d come in here and say, ‘I’ve got to find something. I’ve got to find something,’ ” Wilson recalled.

She has found that, ordinarily, the physically disabled “don’t get a lot of compassion, and people (employers) aren’t willing to take a chance.”

That lesson hasn’t been lost on Genis.

“I’m trying really hard to keep this job because I don’t want to go back on disability. That stinks,” Genis said. “I want to be able to make it on my own.”