THE SHOALS – The good news is: THE SHOALS AREA IS RICH WITH NEW JOBS! NAVISTAR, NORTH AMERICAN LIGHTING, TASUS, WALGREEN’S, FREIGHTCAR AMERICA… the list keeps growing. And of course, our existing, mature employers such as American Wholesale Books, SCA Paper, Hilshire Brands (Jimmy Dean’s), Whitesell, Wise Metals and others are growing and adding employees as our country’s economy continues to improve month after month.
Shoals Entrepreneurial Center – Helps businesses grow so they can hire new employees.
The not-so-good news is: THE SHOALS AREA IS QUICKLY BECOMING A BATTLEGROUND FOR FINDING QUALIFIED PEOPLE TO FILL THESE NEW JOBS. The word among employers, hush-hush as it is, is that finding good people is becoming more difficult every time a new company enters The Shoals, or begins a plant expansion.
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Shoals Economic Development Authority
According to the Shoals Economic Development Authority 1262 jobs have been added or announced since January of last year for SEDA-associated projects. The number of jobs is actually higher than this figure, as 1262 is only jobs connected with SEDA projects. The actual number could be double that. And a great numberof these jobs require specialized skills or secondary education of some type. This is a far cry from the jobs that were prevalent in the 1960’s through the 1980’s. Back then if you could run a sewing machine, or pack clothing into boxes, you had a pretty good chance at getting a decent paying job. Employers back then had a large population of unskilled or semiskilled labor to choose from. Well, not any more!
Business owners face a slew of new challenges here in The Shoals. Success is a two-edged sword, in that as the available talent-base of good employees tightens up, employers have to change the way they have been hiring in the past. Competition is causing many companies to move from the practice of employing temporary hires to bringing people on-board who will stay. These companies are learning that if they don’t offer long-term incentives to their workers, the employees will leave to find work that is full-time. And a good employee is worth it’s weight in gold!
The Quad-Cities Daily, in an effort to serve the needs of Employers and Job-seekers alike, has created a program to bring these two groups together. We call it GOOD JOBS. It is a cost-effective, high-reach program of HELP-WANTED listings. We bagan GOOD JOBS a couple of months ago on a trial basis. Full disclosure, we started small to evaluate the effectiveness of a high-reach, low-cost alternative to newspaper help-wanted ads. “The proof is in the pudding”, it is said. Our flagship GOOD JOBS advertisers are returning regularly to fill their job vacancies. We have received reports that their results have been outstanding! They also tell us that the 80-dollar price tag for GOOD JOBS, which is less than one-fourth of a newspaper listing, gives them more “bang-for-the-buck”!
Maybe you should try it too! Give us a call at The Quad-Cities Daily, 256 320-1245. We would love to talk to you! Or you can send us an e-mail at quadcitiesdaily@gmail.com .
