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Jan Fields, president of McDonald’s USA, LLC, poses for a portrait at a McDonald’s restaurant in Oak Brook, Ill.
MCT PHOTO
CHICAGO — In today’s tough employment market, one company has become the go-to option for the frustrated job seeker: Starbucks. That’s a problem for McDonald’s as it seeks to beef up its workforce for what’s expected to be another year of sales growth.
To nab the attention of top-flight candidates, the Oak Brook, Ill.,-based burger giant is tackling the image of a “McJob.” That means a weeks-long advertising and public-relations campaign leading up to April 19, when McDonald’s Corp. plans to hire 50,000 store-level employees.
McDonald’s hopes to get across the message, much as Starbucks Corp. has successfully done, that a job with it is not a dead end and can offer solid benefits and long-term career opportunities, which the company says already are available to its 600,000 restaurant employees in the United States.
Ron Paul, president of Technomic, a Chicago-based restaurant industry consultancy, described the redefining of a McJob as a tall order.
While Paul said the chain “has a great story to tell” of the benefits it offers that many competitors don’t, and the opportunities to move into management, “they still don’t have the image of a Starbucks.”
“McDonalds is considered to be a fast-food restaurant. It’s going to be tough for them to differentiate themselves from the other fast-food restaurants,” he said, adding that smaller chains, including Chick-fil-A and Panda Express, have been building credibility with young people in recent years as good places to work because of their benefits.
Jan Fields, president of McDonald’s USA, believes her story and those of other senior managers will help recast the image of the company’s entry-level jobs. Senior managers will appear at McDonald’s restaurants to talk about their careers, and the company will promote the hiring event in a national newspaper and radio advertising campaign that’s launching this week.
“I have a McJob,” said Fields, who started her career behind the counter in 1977 as a young mother working her way through school. “And I’m darned proud of it.”
Half of the owner-operators of the chain’s franchises started as restaurant employees, according to McDonald’s, as did 40 percent of McDonald’s corporate staff and 30 percent of its senior management, including CEO Jim Skinner.
Store managers at company-owned restaurants have responsibility for a $2.4 million business (average annual sales for U.S. restaurants) and after five years get a company car, Fields said. They also typically make $50,000 annually after five years.
“McJob” was added to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary in 2003 and has remained there despite the company’s protests. In 2005, McDonald’s sought to boost the image of its restaurant jobs in ads featuring singer Macy Gray and track-and-field Olympian Carl Lewis, who both worked at McDonald’s.
Fields said a number of company initiatives in the past three years have increased the need for manpower at an average U.S. location, where sales ticked up from $2.2 million in 2007 to $2.4 million in 2010. The burger giant rolled out lattes and other espresso drinks nationwide in 2008, necessitating a dedicated drink-maker, and more restaurants are adopting a 24-hour schedule.
Every year, McDonald’s aims for 3 percent to 5 percent same-store sales growth on a global basis. The company is riding eight consecutive years of overall same-store sales gains. McDonald’s usually also sees an increase in business during the summer and typically staffs up in advance.
“One of the things we’ve learned is if you put the people on, the business will come,” Fields said.
If Jimmy McKinney, of Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood, is a benchmark for millennials — people ages 18 to 29 — McDonald’s and other restaurant chains face hurdles to acceptance.
McKinney, a 25-year-old Loyola University graduate student, acknowledged his prejudice about working for McDonald’s but said he’s not interested in working for Starbucks either. He’s aiming for a teaching job when he completes his history degree, although he hasn’t ruled out pursuing a doctorate.
“It’s the stereotype of flipping burgers,” he said.