LA28: Revving Up 5,000 ‘Temp’ Workers
Candidates being hired now for the Games know their roles have end dates. But career-transition programs and market conditions could work in their favor.
The lead-up to the event is all-consuming. The work and preparation get more intense as the date nears. When it finally arrives, it flies by in a blur of adrenaline and excitement. And then it’s over, just like that, and the cycle starts again.
This describes the experience of an Olympic athlete. But it’s also the experience of thousands of behind-the-scenes employees—from C-suite executives to functional leaders to guest services workers—who are hired for what Juliana Barela, general manager of Korn Ferry’s North America Recruitment Process Outsourcing practice, calls “the greatest interim job opportunity ever.” “It’s like a startup that has an end date,” says Barela. “They all know they are working themselves out of a job on the back end.”
The Games may be two years away, but hiring actually started in 2024, at the top of the house, with the CEO and other C-suite leaders. Over the last year, hiring has ramped up considerably: Barela estimates a workforce of close to 900 by the end of this year. By the time the opening ceremonies are held, LA28 will employ a total of 5,000 professional leaders and managers, as well as another 60,000 or so who will be onboarded as official volunteers. LA28 is looking for professionals in all sorts of fields, including finance, legal, marketing, logistics, hospitality, IT, and more. “It’s an enormous lift from a hiring perspective,” says Emilie Petrone, a vice chair in Korn Ferry’s Global Human Resources practice.
It’s easy to see the appeal of working for the Olympics—and it goes beyond proximity to world-class athletes and tickets to prime events. The Olympics rival any major Fortune 500 company from a reputation and brand perspective. To be sure, Barela says, candidates are motivated more by passion and a chance to be part of history than by money, as evidenced by the fact that open jobs for LA28 are attracting several thousand candidates per position.
Working for the Olympics is also a career accelerator in terms of building skills, gaining experience, and networking, says Michele Capra, a vice president in Korn Ferry’s Recruitment Process Outsourcing practice. “You learn so much in such a short window of time,” says Capra. “It would take years to get that kind of experience at a Fortune 500 company.”
Still, these are interim jobs. And amid the current hiring environment and advances in AI, many candidates fear that once the Games are over, they will be back looking for a job in a market that could be worse. One way the organizers of LA28 are trying to overcome that hurdle is by creating a career-transition and outplacement offering, a first for an Olympics. Details are still being worked out, but the goal is to work with the CHROs of partners and sponsors of LA28, as well as businesses in California, to place employees following the Games. “We want to provide LA28 employees with an off-ramp to get hired,” says Jeanne MacDonald, CEO of Korn Ferry’s Recruitment Process Outsourcing practice.
As part of the offering, Korn Ferry professionals will work with LA28 employees who opt in with job leads, interview coaching, packaging skills, and experience gained, as well as organize job fair-like networking events with partners, and more. MacDonald says the program is part of LA28’s commitment to making a positive impact in its host community, which—as the entertainment capital of the world—has plenty of local and global businesses that need precisely the kind of talent the Games are hiring.
To some degree, today’s tough labor market could make an interim job appealing, says Dan Zautis, a director with Korn Ferry’s Interim Executives and Professionals business. Zautis says that as firms move to a skills-based hiring strategy, an interim gig with LA28 could work in favor of a professional or executive who wants to transition to a different industry or function. “You can sell the experience at your next job quite easily,” says Zautis.
Learn more about Korn Ferry’s Talent Acquisition capabilities.
