In case you missed the news, McDonald’s had a National Hiring Event April 19th when they recruited 50,000 new employees from the front counter to the home office. We are tremendously excited for this event and the overwhelming response that we’ve received from prospective employees and media.
With this post, I wanted to lift the tent slightly and share a little about how we are managing the communications for this event. As you can imagine, the planning and communications out to the Field (McDonald’s speak for the 14,000 restaurants and thousands of employees around the country that make our operations run smoothly) has been going on for months.
This includes coordinated efforts from operations, HR, legal and our amazing internal communications team to ensure that managers and franchisees are aligned with the operational processes necessary to manage thousands of applications. From an external communications perspective, we have been beating the bushes to build awareness about the event while also using the publicity for our efforts to change perceptions about “McJobs” by illustrating the many benefits, flexibility and career opportunities available at McDonald’s.
Now that the day is upon us, a core team has been assembled in a “war room” style setup to monitor operations and communications for the hiring event. We gathered at 7 am in a board room in Oak Brook. We have folks from Restaurant Operations, Marketing, HR, Legal, Internal Communications, External Communications, Customer Satisfaction and yours truly representing social media.
Our job is to monitor all internal and external communications efforts to ensure that things run smoothly from the managers and franchisees taking applications in restaurants to job applicants filling out their forms either in-person or online. I’m monitoring Twitter chatter and responding to questions from applicants. My buddy from Legal is sitting to my left making sure that I say the right things in real time.
We are nearly halfway through the day and so far it has been smooth sailing. But we are here at the ready.
Rick Wion