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McDonald’s holds hiring ‘blitz’ in Saanich

McDonald’s Canada’s annual West Hiring Day looks to hire 1,000 employees in four provinces

Monday promises to be an especially busy day for Ken Taylor, owner of nine McDonald’s franchises in the Greater Victoria, including three in Saanich.

He plans to travel to all nine locations across the region to monitor progress during McDonald’s Canada’s annual West Hiring Day, which the company describes as “a one-day hiring blitz” with the goal of hiring more than 1,000 new employees across British Columbia, Alberta, and Manitoba.

“I’m going to do my best,” he said, sitting in his location on Saanich Road near Uptown. Colourful balloons have popped around the store for the occasion, and Taylor keeps an eye on cellphone to track the hiring process in his other locations, One of this stores on the West Shore has already hired a full-time employee.

While this specific Saanich location was still waiting for its first hire when Taylor arrived, it was early yet, and not long after, one of the assistant mangers, was interviewing an applicant. So for what is Taylor looking? It is not necessarily a question of skills, he said.

“We can train [staff to do] just about anything,” he said. Rather, he is looking for individuals with an attentive attitude, who have what Taylor calls the “customer-service gene,” who can engage with customers.

“It’s a person’s ability to communicate that we are looking for,” he said.

While the company accept applications all the time, events like today’s represent an added effort to hire employees in a tight labour market.

Victoria’s unemployment rate sits at 4.2 per cent, compared to 4.5 per cent in March, after hitting a low of 3.3 per cent in November 2017.



Wolf Depner

About the Author: Wolf Depner

I joined the national team with Black Press Media in 2023 from the Peninsula News Review, where I had reported on Vancouver Island's Saanich Peninsula since 2019.
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