The San Diego Zoo and Safari Park are hiring fewer employees for summer employment but instead are placing more emphasis on college internships. Gearing up for summer hires, Tim Mulligan, chief human resources officer, said, “With this economy, we are instead focusing on giving the maximum number of hours possible to our existing employees. We are definitely hiring fewer seasonal employees than we have in a very long time.”  Mulligan said such a philosophy encourages cross training with work in various departments and places more focus on the successful Zoo U College Relations Program. “We’ll likely see nearly 120 college interns hired [this summer],” he said. This year will be the fourth summer for the college relations program. Mulligan said the program has grown steadily each year.  “In 2010, we hired 90 college interns,” he said. “We have partnered with four West Coast four-year hospitality schools — San Diego State University, Cal Poly Pomona, University of Las Vegas and Washington State University.” The interns will work in various customer service departments, including food, merchandising and operations. In addition, the zoo hires 18 Conservation Fellows to work on unique conservation projects at the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research. The areas that are currently hiring paid staff are the food service, merchandising and operations departments. Mulligan said zoo employers are seeing “a more experienced, mature workforce than applicant pools of years past.”  He stated the overall theme for the zoo is quality versus quantity in terms of hiring. “Gone are the days of huge job fairs,” he said. “Instead we now utilize more personalized, invite-only, hiring events with prescreened applicants.”