(Glendale, AZ) - Donna Dooley-Oakley walked around the floor of University of Phoenix Stadium Saturday, excited and happy to be walking in the home of the Arizona Cardinals.
And in a way, her trip to the stadium had a little something to do with sports.
Dooley-Oakley spent Saturday morning applying for jobs at the stadium, hoping to supplement her income as a nurse’s aide and nanny.
“I can do anything,” she said. “I’ve done a lot of customer service jobs. But I don’t mind cleaning toilets.”
As a nurse’s aide, the Glendale resident has worked in Sun City and other parts of the West Valley, and a stadium job would be close to home, fitting into her schedule if she worked weekends for Cardinals games and other events.
But the extra income would allow Dooley-Oakley to pay off credit cards.
Stadium management, catering, and security companies used the Saturday job fair to fill more than 500 jobs, said Kenneth Velez, marketing coordinator for University of Phoenix Stadium.
Stadium operators Global Spectrum, along with S.A.F.E. Management, Cre8tive Associates LLC, and Rojo Hospitality Group, offered part-time, event-related jobs, from catering positions, to ushers, security, and housekeeping, Velez said.
Dooley-Oakley said she has experience working as an usher, which she did at another stadium in high school and college, but also told another prospective employer that as a third generation Arizonan, she wouldn’t mind sweating in the heat directing traffic.
Thousands of people like Dooley-Oakley filtered through all day, some companies conducting in-house interviews, hoping to fill most positions over the weekend, Velez said.
“Most people will have this job and another job,” Velez said. Pays rates for the jobs ranged from minimum wage to about $10 an hour but Roberta Yancy of Peoria said she was looking for a job that wouldn’t require her to move up and down the stairs too much. A job as a ticket-taker would be the least painful on her knees.
Yancy said she has a job working for the Area Agency on Aging ageWORKS program that offers work placement for 20 hours for older adults, but her time in the four-year work program is nearing an end, so she’s been looking for other work.
While Yancy concedes she hasn’t been that active in looking for another job, since she’s ready to retire for the third time, she is nevertheless raising her teenage granddaughter and needs the money. Her son also is unemployed and looking for work, Yancy said.
New employees, like bartender Larry McFall, will start during preseason games for the Cardinals in mid-August. McFall was glad to have his new job after spending about an hour filling out his applications and interviewing.
“It was a pretty quick job fair with this many people,” he said. He was sure his previous experience working as a stadium bartender helped him land the position and having a clear goal in mind meant that employers knew what the best fit would be. It could be hard to place people if they say they’ll do anything, McFall theorized.
Courtesy of Daily News-Sun
