It’s now officially the holiday shopping season, and retailers are preparing themselves for the onslaught of shoppers by hiring on seasonal employees. Those looking for that kind of work will have plenty of options this holiday season, but one online retailer wants those seeking employment to come to them.

Amazon announced this morning that it’s now beginning its holiday hiring spree as its fulfillment centers across the country. It’s hoping to hire 70,000 workers to help deal with what it sees as a 40 percent increase in customer demand over the last year.

Now, seasonal employment is sometimes seen as a bad thing. After all, you’re only working for a few months, and then dumped out on the curb once the company no longer needs you. The same is true at Amazon, but the online retailer says that it does intend to convert a few thousand of this year’s seasonal employees into full-time permanent employees after the holidays are over. In fact, the retailer says that it added more than 40,000 jobs since 2008.

“So far this year, we have converted more than 7,000 temporary employees in the U.S. into full-time, regular roles and we’re looking forward to converting thousands more after this holiday season,” said Dave Clark, Amazon’s vice president of worldwide operations and customer service. “Each year, seasonal jobs lead to thousands of long-term, full-time roles in our sites—jobs that offer great pay, benefits starting on day one and the chance for employees to further their education through our Career Choice program.”

Speaking of that Career Choice program, that’s has to be the number one reason most people work for Amazon. If you happen to get hired on permanently, Amazon will pay 95 percent of your tuition if you work towards a degree in an in-demand field. It doesn’t even need to relate to work at Amazon as its employees are pursuing degrees in game design, health care, IT programming and visual communications.

If that sounds good to you, you can apply for a seasonal job by hitting up the Amazon Fulfillment page. If working in a warehouse doesn’t sound that great to you, let it also be known that GameStop is looking to hire on 17,000 seasonal employees for the holidays.

[Image: AmazonFulfillment/YouTube]