October 21, 2005

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Palo Alto Online

Hiring season

by Jenny Lim

When Greg Bradford was 13-years-old, he took his first stab at what he thought was Italian cooking.

In an attempt to make an "Italian quiche", the teen beat eggs, bacon, chives and cilantro together, then poured the creamy concoction into one of his mother's made-from-scratch piecrusts.

He burnt the pie. And, as his father gingerly pointed out, it wasn't really Italian cuisine.

Bradford, now a 23-year-old aspiring chef, will get a chance to employ his cooking skills at Quattro, the upscale Italian restaurant at the Four Seasons Hotel in East Palo Alto.

Bradford, an East Palo Alto native, is one of the city's 55 residents who received job offers from the hotel. After four interviews with kitchen and hotel management, Bradford was hired as a mid-level cook. He will start when the hotel opens next year.

"I couldn't believe it," Bradford said. "This is the perfect opportunity for me to live and work in my neighborhood."

The Four Seasons is trying to make good on its pledge to hire a third of its staff from East Palo Alto. Businesses located in the city's redevelopment district are required to fill 30 percent of their staffs with local workers.

The hotel plans on hiring 270 employees - meaning at least 90 should come from East Palo Alto, said Robert Whitfield, the Four Seasons' general manager.

The hotel has made efforts to recruit East Palo Alto residents since this past spring. In May, the hotel gave the city $100,000 for pre-employment training for locals. The hotel held two employment information sessions for the city's residents in August. The Four Seasons limited its first job fair Sept. 22-23 to East Palo Alto residents only.

Three hundred residents interviewed for positions during the initial fair, said Tracey Wiese, the hotel's human resources director. The Four Seasons offered letters of hiring intent to 35 of those applicants.

The letters tell recruits, "If you're looking for a job, stop," Wiese said. "The letters say, 'We want you.'"

An additional 20 letters of intent were sent to East Palo Alto residents who applied during the hotel's job fairs Sept. 29-30 and Oct. 6-7.

The hotel has issued another 55 letters of intent to applicants residing outside East Palo Alto. Any new hire must pass a drug test and background and reference checks before their employment is official, Wiese said.

Bradford said he received his job offer at his final interview the first week of October. He applied for a position before the hotel job fairs were held.

Since graduating from the California Culinary Academy in 2002, Bradford has been working toward a goal: to become an executive chef at his own restaurant by age 30. He currently works as a cook at the Hyatt in Burlingame.

In September, when he heard the Four Seasons was accepting applications, Bradford said he jumped at the chance to apply for any culinary openings at the posh hotel restaurant.

He hopes the Four Seasons will transform his hometown's reputation for crime.

"When people think East Palo Alto, they think things are going on here with killings, drugs, police," Bradford said. "As someone born and raised in East Palo Alto, I want people to come here without thinking those things. Hopefully, the Four Seasons will start to change people's minds about East Palo Alto."

Now a gleaming glass skeleton at the intersection of U.S. Highway 101 and University, the 200-room Four Seasons will stand 10 stories high upon completion. A standard room -- with its requisite 42-inch plasma TV, Italian marble Jacuzzi tub and chilled Evian bottles in the mini-fridge -- will go for $325 a night.

"This is not a dangerous neighborhood that's just about drugs on street corners or shootings," Bradford said. "I hope people will look at the hotel in East Palo Alto and say, 'Wow -- let's go there.'"

Bradford and the majority of staff who received letters of intent won't go on the payroll until two- to three weeks before the Four Seasons opens, general manager Whitfield said.

The hotel is slated to open by the end of March 2006.

Whitfield said the hotel has given job offers to East Palo Alto residents at every level of employment, including positions in the housekeeping, culinary, security, accounting, administrative and IT departments.

"It's been clear that the applicants have got huge pride in being East Palo Alto residents," Whitfield said. "They want to be ambassadors for their city, so whatever it takes, they want jobs with the hotel."

Since the hotel is still filling positions, it's too early to tell if it will meet its commitment to local hiring, said Marie McKenzie, redevelopment manager for East Palo Alto.

She said the anticipated hotel jobs will ease but not erase the city's unemployment rate. The Four Seasons will add 90 local hires to the retail center, which currently staffs 40 percent of its 900 jobs with East Palo Alto residents, according to McKenzie.

"I think the Four Seasons will help with unemployment in the city, but I don't think it will be a major employer," McKenzie said.

In August, the City of East Palo Alto had a 10.2 percent unemployment rate, according to the California Employment Development Department. San Mateo County reported an average of 4.3 percent employment. Palo Alto's unemployment rate was 2.7 percent.

The Four Seasons has not scheduled any more hiring fairs, but the hotel is still accepting applications for its remaining 160 positions, Wiese said. The hotel has also tried to recruit employees at job fairs in Santa Clara County and San Francisco.

Jannie Parker, one of two East Palo Alto residents already working for the Four Seasons, said she was looking for employment that would send dollars back into her community. The hotel will collect a 12 percent transient occupancy tax that will go toward city services.

"I live here, I work here, and I want to keep my roots in the city," said Parker, the first East Palo Alto resident hired by the Four Seasons. She is a sales administrative assistant who runs a computer inventory system for the hotel.

In two weeks, she and other management staff will move out of the Four Seasons' pre-opening office in Redwood City and into their ground-level suite at the hotel.

To Parker, the Four Seasons is an icon of potential.

"The Four Seasons is the best of the best," said Parker, 22, who previously worked in hospitality at the Sheraton and Westin hotels in Palo Alto. "I applied for a job because I wanted to move up with a great corporate company."

Parker, an East Palo Alto resident since she was 3, has heard some say the city doesn't need a luxury hotel.

"But once the hotel succeeds, it will attract better things for the city," Parker said. "People will see the bounty of things the Four Seasons will bring."

Weekly intern Jenny Lim can be e-mailed at jlim@paweekly.com

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