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Poundland, the discount retail store, has announced that it will be looking to fill around 2,500 temporary Christmas jobs for the 2013 holidays. Most of the Christmas sales assistants jobs at Poundland will be based at its 450 stores in the United Kingdom, but there will also be around 160 Christmas jobs at their Irish Dealz outlets too.

In 2012, Poundland only hired around 2,000 seasonal staff for Christmas, so the number of positions up for grabs this year represents an increase of 25 per cent in temporary staffing levels compared to last year.

Chief Executive Officer for Poundland, Jim McCarthy, said he was proud to be offering more temporary vacancies for Christmas 2013, especially with a backdrop of a fragile jobs market in the retail sector. He also hoped that many of the new recruits would be taken on for a long term basis after the Christmas shopping boost was over.

“The festive period is always an especially busy time for Poundland as our value-conscious customers look to stock up on Christmas decorations, stocking fillers and gifts. We are looking for conscientious and enthusiastic individuals, who strive to provide the best possible customer service. Nearly 35% of our temporary colleagues last year were retained in permanent roles in the business,” said Mr McCarthy.

In the longer term, Poundland hopes to double the number of locations from which it retails in the United Kingdom & Ireland to 1,000 stores. The firm expects to create something in the region of 15,000 full or part time jobs as it expands to those levels in the future.

Recently, Poundland has been opening an average of a store every week and expects to establish around 100 new outlets in the next two years. The retailer has not yet set a full timeline out, however, for whether that scale of growth will continue beyond the next two years so it isn’t clear how long it will take for the full 15,000 jobs to be created.

For more inspiration as to which of the big retailers might be hiring extra staff into seasonal jobs this year, check out the “Jobs In Every Store” section of our recent Christmas Jobs 2013 blogpost. You can also find out what seasonal positions are open for applications right now on our dedicated page of Christmas Job Vacancies.