McDonald’s is already going for the gold in recruitment activities in the warm-up to the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The end of this month will find the fast food giant complete a major internal recruitment drive - to select 2,000 crew members who will staff four Olympic Park restaurants during the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

More than 6,000 McDonald’s crew members will have competed for the two-week work opportunities. Fifty managers are also being selected from its existing restaurant manager ranks to lead the crews for the Games, according to Jez Langhorn, vice president, people, McDonald’s. UK-based crew members and managers will be joined by 150 crew from around the world who will have earned positions to serve during the Games.

McDonald’s is the official restaurant for the London Games. One of the Olympic Park eateries, all of which will disappear after the Games, will seat 1,500 people and be the largest McDonald’s outlet in the world. Nearly 800,000 people are expected to visit the park each day during the course of the two Games programmes.

The crew members deployed to the Games - 1,000 for the Olympics and 1,000 for the Paralympics - will spend their respective fortnights in London at a four-star hotel where they will be treated to numerous social activities and entertainment during non-working hours. They will work six-hour shifts, with two hours allotted to travel-to-work time in recognition of the high-volume, highly pressurised on-the-job environment at the Games, Langhorn said.

In addition to the company’s own Games-focused recruitment activity, Langhorn said that McDonald’s also trained 2,500 people on behalf of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) to interview candidates for the 70,000 volunteer positions that will support the Games. McDonald’s was also involved in the creation of the training materials. McDonald’s training capabilities will further benefit LOCOG in March, when 11,000 LOCOG event leaders will go to McDonald’s University in East Finchley for training.

“As a people business, that’s a big employer in the UK and a big trainer and educator, we think it’s a really good natural match for us to help LOCOG on this recruitment, training and retention for volunteers - and for their leadership as well,” Langhorn said.

“We hope that will build trust in McDonald’s when they see the depth and strength of our training.”