

Mcdonalds Hires 62,000 in National Event - 1,000,000+ Applications Received - chailatte
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-28/mcdonald-s-hires-62-000-during-national-event-24-more-than-planned.html

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jordan0day
On one hand, I want to say good on them. While I'm sure this was mostly a PR
thing, at a time when unemployment is high (especially for unskilled laborers)
any news like "62,000 new hires" seems like good news.

On the other hand, 62,000 new employees nationwide breaks down to something
like 3-4 new employees per store. This sort of large-scale, top-down action
seems like it has huge potentials to create inefficiencies. How many of these
new hires will be let go in a month because they're not needed? Maybe none,
maybe there really were 62,000 positions to be filled nationwide and each
store was able to hire the exact right number of folks.

Which brings me to my third hand, that is, a well-publicized "national hiring
event" certainly was smart -- it probably brings in a much larger pool of
applicants, letting them select more well-qualified people all at once, rather
than on an ad-hoc basis.

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phirephly
Or they hire 3-4 new people, which gives them the man power to make sure 8-12
other people never get over-time, or knock a few of them down to part-time to
strip them of benefits.

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reader5000
So McDonalds is now approximately as selective as Harvard [1].

[1] [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/30/college-
admissions-...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/30/college-admissions-
rates-_n_842807.html#s259866&title=Clark_University_672).

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cynest
When you consider only the nontrivial applications in each, McDonalds is
probably more selective.

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orijing
I'm confused. Isn't McDonalds franchised? How come it can direct its
franchisees to hire people that it (maybe) does not need?

Can someone clarify this, since it appears that I'm the only one confused?

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glhaynes
Why would McDonald's have been understaffed by 62,000 people? Unless they're
planning on opening a ton of new stores, why would they suddenly need to hire
so many at once?

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natesm
These comments sum it up pretty nicely:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2498841>
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2499044>

3 or 4 people per store is very low and is probably not that different, if at
all, from typical hiring practices. They just synchronized these ones up for
an event.

It's also almost summer - college students might be quitting their jobs to
leave for the summer, and high school students might be getting hired.

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PaulHoule
PR.

Fast food chains have high turnover. People are always leaving, so even if
McDonalds was slowly contracting, they'd be hiring new people at a high rate.

This press release does create a sense of optimism about the economy which
might be justified. The economy looks pretty good from my position, but could
look pretty lousy to somebody who's unemployed.

My feeling is that people have been getting pessimistic because of $4 gas and
the talk about the federal deficit. I see a lot of evidence that companies of
various sorts are moving forward with initiatives all over the place so I'm a
believer in the recovery.

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Natsu
Yeah, it feels like things are improving from my perspective, too. I'm a
sysadmin for a factory and it does seem like our incoming orders generally
correlate with news about the economy. Lately, there's been more talk of new
business and such, which makes me feel like things are on the rebound.

But like you said, perspectives vary.

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PaulHoule
It's funny, particularly when you break it down by region.

Tompkins County, where I live and work, has a 5.9% unemployment rate (one of
the lowest in the U.S.) but I haven't worked for a company that's actually
based in Tompkins for years. We hear a lot of talk about a "new tech bubble"
in Silicon Valley but San Jose has an unemployment rate of 10.6% which is
worse than the national average. If you're one of those workers that Google
and Facebook are fighting over, however, it probably seems pretty good to you.

Las Vegas still seems to be one of the worst affected places, and I think it's
the very success of the gambling industry that's killing Vegas. It seems that
in most parts of the country there is a halfway decent casino within a few
hour's drive... Why would anybody want to pay $300+ for an airline ticket and
to get groped by the T.S.A.?

