Mar. 27, 2003 - The economy may be limping along, but the luxury Grande Lakes Orlando resort is in full sprint to fill 1,200 jobs during the next four months. 

The $600 million project, under construction in south Orange County, will feature a 544-room Ritz-Carlton hotel and a 1,000-room JW Marriott hotel on 500 acres. It is scheduled to open in July. 

To fill all those positions -- everything from managers to assistant chefs and housekeepers -- the resort this week launched an online application process, similar to the way the Transportation Security Agency filled thousands of jobs for airport security nationwide last year. 

Job seekers "can work on the application at their leisure," said Ellen Weitzel, director of human resources for JW Marriott Orlando. "It's the first time we've done this," Weitzel said of the combined online application process by the two, jointly owned luxury brand hotels. 

But even before the grandelakesjobs.com Web site was launched, the hotel companies were flooded with 3,500 unsolicited resumes, a sign that the job market is soft. 

Many of the applicants for the Ritz-Carlton and JW Marriott jobs will be industry professionals looking to move up, hotel specialists said. 

"Luxury hotels are a dream job to a lot of people in the industry so I'm sure a lot of their applicants are people looking to switch jobs. These are not all unemployed people," said Katie Davin, a professor in the hospitality college at Johnson & Wales University, in Providence, R.I. 

The hotel industry right now is sluggish along with the rest of the economy, Davin said, and the volume of hiring in Orlando for the Ritz-Carlton and JW Marriott is unusual. 

"From what I've heard from our students, in 1999-2000 our graduates were getting five job offers. Now it's down to one or two, and they may have to take a supervisory position instead of the management job they really wanted," Davin said. 

While the war in Iraq has added to hospitality industry worries, upper-tier hotels are still holding up well in the Orlando area and will compete with Ritz-Carlton and JW Marriott for employees in the coming weeks and months. 

"I have 130 jobs to fill right now myself," said Michael Sansbury, regional vice president for Loews Hotels, which operates three hotels at Universal Orlando. "Our projections for the next six months are pretty robust. We haven't had any cancellations." 

Weitzel of JW Marriott said that only a few of the top management posts for the Grande Lakes hotels have been filled so far, and everyone who applies will be considered and notified whether hired or not. 

People who do not have access to a computer or need help in filling out an online application, Weitzel said, can go to one of the state-operated One Stop Career Centers. 

The closest one to Grande Lakes Orlando is in Kissimmee at John Young Parkway and U.S. Highway 192. That outlet will be open on April 5-6 for Grande Lakes applicants only, Weitzel said. "They have bilingual help, too," she said. 

Weitzel said she could not say what the various jobs would pay or give a range for starting hourly wages, other than to characterize them as "at the top of the hotel wage scale." 

The luxury hotels decided to try an online job application process, Weitzel said, rather than a traditional job fair to speed the process and make it easier on applicants. 

"People have to stand in line, wait for review of the application. It's challenging," Weitzel said. "This way they can do it from home and take their time." 

Grande Lakes Orlando is located at John Young Parkway at the Central Florida Parkway, two miles east of SeaWorld and 3 1/2 miles southeast of the Orange County Convention Center. 

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(c) 2003. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News. MAR, BUD,