James Bell
Hays Post
The first Retail Academy will take place at The Mall, 2918 Vine, in the former Fashion Bug location from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday.
The event will feature Lanae Lang, district manager for The Buckle, and will allow participants the ability to submit applications to local businesses, speak with retail owners and managers, and have resumes critiqued by KansasWorks.
“It’s a career fair of sorts,” said mall property manager Katie Dorzweiler, who organized the event.
“The purpose of Retail Academy is to target professional, energetic, self-motivated applicants, versus just someone that’s looking for a paycheck,” she said. “We’re looking for the people that are looking for a passion.”
With the various businesses that will attend the event, opportunities for job seekers will be available.
“There’s all range of jobs. There’s leadership jobs, there’s management jobs, there’s marketing jobs, there’s part-time associate jobs, but all of them deal with communications, leadership, marketing, customer service, hospitality,” Dorzweiler said.
“Most of the tenants here in The Mall have some type of job opening,” as the locations are staffing up for the return of Fort Hays State University students in the fall, she added.
While the event is sponsored by The Mall, it is open to all local businesses.
“We have it open to the public, so other customer service-oriented business are welcome to join,” Dorzweiler said. “We’re hoping that it will really elevate the level of customer service within the community.”
As the academy is new to The Mall, Dorzweiler reached out to Ellis County Coalition for Economic Development to help organize the event.
“We do a career fair, hosted with the Ellis County Coalition, held at the mall every spring partnered with KansasWorks,” said Aaron White, coalition executive director. “It’s a great event, and it attracts a lot of employers, so it fits real well with the idea of doing something specific for a certain type of industry.”
While a job fair for the service industry is new, White said in the past the coalition has organized other career fairs specifically for other industries.
“When the mall folks came to us with this idea of doing something geared specifically toward retail, we thought it was a great idea,” he said.
Businesses interested in being a part of the Retail Academy can call Dorzweiler at (785) 625-3314.