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TheBuzz Erika Engle |
Homegrown workforce
sprouting for General GrowthGeneral Growth Properties Inc. is looking to grow human capital. The company is rolling out an unpaid internship program called, "GGP Prodigies," designed to provide college juniors and seniors hands-on experience in the shopping center industry and academic credits at the same time.
"GGP Prodigies provides the company with new talent while minimizing recruiting costs," said John Bucksbaum, chief executive officer.
"Through this internship program, GGP will not only gain a leading edge over the competition in attracting and retaining employees, but will continue our reputation of being a leader in the shopping center industry," he said in a statement.
Chicago-based General Growth owns both Ala Moana Center and the Victoria Ward complex. The Hawaii properties are among 164 regional shopping malls in 39 states in which the company owns an interest.
Students will get a taste of various aspects of shopping center operations including retail management, marketing, public relations, leasing, finance, accounting and technology. Their mentors will be GGP executives responsible for day-to-day oversight of the operations.
"General Growth has been doing this for a couple years. We just started implementing it at Ala Moana, really concentrating on it a few months ago," said Sharon James, regional vice president for marketing.
"The intern we have right now works afternoons, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays ... and they may help out with special events and entertainment," such as on Saturdays.
"We work around their schedule, so the hours are pretty flexible," she said.
The internships are usually a semester long and involve hands-on work as well as online time.
"General Growth has a whole online curriculum," James said.
Most of the students come from predictable fields of study, such as business, communications, advertising and marketing, James said.
Ala Moana is interviewing candidates for the next semester.
Interested college juniors and seniors should contact Human Capital Manager Cynthia Tanaka at 946-2811.
In planning its long-term goals, General Growth will seek student input, picking their brains as part of the process.
Airborne aloha
A plane-damaging fire will not stand between East Coasters and the Hawaiian gifts that were winging their way to the winter wonderland.Christmas gifts from Hawaii were among the precious cargo that burned in a fire on a FedEx plane in Memphis on Thursday. The seven people on board escaped peril, but the Polynesian parcels were not preserved.
The crew at HiloHattie.com learned of the potential problem early Friday morning from an East Coast customer, according to manager Liza Inouye.
Getting through to the company's FedEx representative took some doing, but once contact was made, "within an hour she got us a list of the packages."
"We were worried we would have 200 packages, luckily it was only 24," Inouye said.
"A lot of our customers who shop online came into our stores while they were here and there are a lot of (other) people who really love Hawaii." Some of the packages were self-ordered while others were ordered for loved ones and were being shipped directly.
"We called all the customers to let them know and we had to scramble to get everything out" by Friday afternoon, she said.
The shipments of gift baskets containing everything from candies to lotions to kitschy dashboard hula dolls will arrive at their destinations today and Wednesday, Inouye said.
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Erika Engle is a reporter with the Star-Bulletin. Call 529-4302, fax 529-4750 or write to Erika Engle, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., No. 7-210, Honolulu, HI 96813. She can also be reached at: eengle@starbulletin.com