Recruiting is already underway for the next Olympic Games

As the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan wraps up, efforts to recruit employees for the next Olympic Games are already well underway.

Consulting firm Korn Ferry announced in January it is working on this with the organizing committee for the 2028 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games, which will take place in Los Angeles. In addition to helping the LA28 organizing committee hire thousands of employees to bring the Games to life, the firm is advising on other HR-related matters, like developing an employee value proposition and advising on post-career transition strategies, a leader with the firm told HR Brew.

Seeking agile skillsets. LA28 plans to hire about 5,000 employees over the course of four years to work for the Games, said Jeanne MacDonald, CEO of Korn Ferry’s recruitment process outsourcing practice. The firm has been advising the organizing committee on these efforts since 2024, working closely with LA28 Chief People Officer Tami Majer, she said.

At the time of writing, there are more than 40 job opportunities listed in the LA28 website, ranging from an integrated planning lead for ceremonies operations to a hospitality operations and production manager. MacDonald said her team is helping recruit for roles like sports leaders, who are involved with planning, strategizing and managing events such as swimming. Transportation managers and leaders will also be critical hires for a congested city like LA, as they’ll be responsible for managing traffic throughout the city, and overseeing the logistics of getting in and out of venues.

These opportunities are unique because they revolve around a tight, three-year timeline, MacDonald said. When considering candidates, Korn Ferry looks not only at hard skills, but also soft skills like critical thinking and agility. “You’re hiring folks who have a core skill that they need to be able to take…and move it towards the event,” she explained.

The job of a lifetime. As Korn Ferry helps LA28 develop an employee value proposition, one slogan they landed on was that these opportunities don’t represent a “job for a lifetime,” but rather “the job of a lifetime.”

The immense draw of the Games means MacDonald and her team spend a lot of time on “candidate care,” i.e. ensuring that applicants feel supported in the process, even if they don’t get the job. “There’s so much interest in wanting to work for the Olympics, and the Olympics is so precious about making sure that every candidate is treated with care,” she said.

“If someone isn’t appropriate for a certain role, we ensure that we’ll keep in touch with you for the next opportunity,” she added.

Supporting LA28 employees after their contract ends is also part of Korn Ferry’s work with the Games. “Everybody who comes there knows that their job is ending,” MacDonald said. Workers will have access to career transition services to offboard and find other opportunities once that moment comes.

Will LA28 jumpstart the job market? Hiring for LA28 is occurring at a time when California’s unemployment rate sits at 5.5%, higher than any other state in the US. The job market in Los Angeles has suffered in recent years due to a hiring slowdown in the entertainment industry that has yet to rebound, as well as wildfires that occurred in the region last January, putting an estimated 6,300–8,700 residents out of work.

Whether the Olympics can help salvage a stagnant job market is a topic of perennial interest for economists.

Hosting the Olympics doesn’t typically make financial sense for cities in the short-term due to the large upfront costs, Lynn Minnaert, dean of the school of hospitality at Metropolitan State University Denver, said. “But maybe in the longer term, when you think of regeneration and hopefully upskilling of your community, there could be benefits that are worthwhile to pursue,” she said. Minneart studied the 2012 Olympic Games in London, where there was a concerted effort to upskill local residents for jobs in the construction trades.

With the Olympics, the labor market impacts hinge in part on whether there is a conscious effort to hire “people who may be underrepresented…who may be unemployed, but they need an opportunity to sort of get into that space,” Kyriaki Kaplanidou, a professor who chairs the Department of Sport Management at the University of Florida, said. “At the same time, this is a very targeted area in terms of knowledge and expertise.”

The 1984 Los Angeles Olympics is often cited as a success story not because it spurred sustained job creation, but rather because it turned a profit—a rare feat for a host city. Korn Ferry was also involved in recruiting talent for that event, as it headhunted businessman Peter Ueberroth to serve as president of the organizing committee.