HispanicBusiness

It's still 100 degrees out, but it's time for job seekers who are interested in temporary work in the fall and spring to start trolling.

Employers such as the mammoth Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center on Lake Grapevine are already advertising holiday jobs, taking resumes and running job fairs. Others, such as the major Grapevine video game retailer GameStop, will start in September.

Want to work sooner? Consider the approaching Halloween season. Six Flags Over Texas in Arlington, for example, expects to hire 450 people in September and October for its FrightFest.

And income tax services, which annually hire thousands of temporary workers for the peak filing season, are already lining up candidates for fall tax preparation classes.

Shawn Boyer, chief executive of Richmond, Va.-based Snagajob, a leading employment website that specializes in hourly jobs, says job seekers should look now for holiday work. Last year, 47 percent of hiring managers in a Snagajob survey indicated they planned to start holiday hiring in September, Boyer noted.

The firm is gearing up to do this year's survey this month, and Boyer said he expects most companies will have a good idea of their holiday hiring plans by the end of August.

"What we're hearing is that [employers] are going to be at least as aggressive as they were last year, and last year, they were more aggressive," he said.

The wild card: the financial markets' turmoil.

"I'm just not sure what the roller coaster ride has done [to consumer confidence] and what that means for the retailers" and their holiday hiring plans, Boyer said.

Gaylord Texan

The Gaylord is already advertising for 300 box office agents, attraction and retail attendants, supervisors and costumed characters for the annual ICE! exhibit and Lone Star Christmas fete, which open Nov. 11. New this year: costumed characters such as Shrek, from a partnership with DreamWorks.

Typically, the Gaylord hires about 250 for the holidays, but the addition of the characters boosted the total for this year, spokeswoman Martha Neibling said.

Gaylord's holiday hiring fair Thursday drew more than 100 applicants and resulted in 33 on-the-spot job offers, pending background screenings and drug tests, Neibling said.

At 3 p.m. Monday at the hotel's Glass Cactus restaurant, the Gaylord will conduct open auditions for the DreamWorks characters. The Gaylord plans to schedule another job fair Sept. 17 to take in applications for holiday jobs other than characters.

Pay starts at $8.41 per hour for the seasonal employees, with 40-hour-plus weeks for most, Neibling said. Supervisors are paid $11.15 per hour, characters $10 per hour.

Besides the holiday jobs, the Gaylord has 209 open jobs, many connected to its new Paradise Springs pool and river complex, Neibling said. Apply at www.gaylordcareers.com.

Most of the holiday jobs start in late October and run through Jan. 1, and there are opportunities for top performers to stay on after that, she said.

"We always have seasonal [employees] who end up staying and moving into full-time positions," she said.

GameStop

GameStop expects to hire about 19,000 for the holidays, equal to last year, said Mike Buskey, senior vice president of human resources.