Task force receives recruitment update

MOSES LAKE — Movement continues to determine the Columbia Basin's worker needs.

Fourteen people gathered in the Hardin Room in Big Bend Community College's ATEC Building Friday morning for the latest operations task force meeting.

The meetings are designed to cover efforts to recruit workers into or from within the Columbia Basin area.

For the marketing committee, Jeffrey Wiberg said a vendor was secured for a Web site and the domain name of centralwashingtonjobs.com was purchased.

"We're going to utilize that Web site to be kind of piggyback, not just being for job listings but also a central, one-stop location for all the various different angles we plan to market our community from," Wiberg said.

Angles include quality of life, schools and opportunities.

Wiberg is awaiting information from regional job fairs on costs and dates for possible venues for the rest of the year to showcase an information booth about job opportunities in the Columbia Basin.

On behalf of the training committee, Mary Shannon said the recent job and career fair held at the college received 1,250 visitors and included 76 exhibitors, 66 of which were employers and the rest representing education programs.

"A lot of employers were hiring; a lot more emphasis on jobs that were available," she said. "We were asking for concrete job descriptions, skill sets and pay levels. We've been gathering all that information."

Shannon said schools are asking what the jobs are, pay levels and the level of training required.

In the wake of two chemical processing plant closures in Holland, Mich., Worksource Business Services representative Dustan Knauss is working with REC Silicon Director of Human Resources Dean Martinez, to recruit workers to the area for chemical process operation positions.

Knauss is also working to gather occupational classifications.

"It's specific," he said. "There's an O-net code for a social worker, for a concrete person. What we are doing with that information is we're taking all the job listings we have, and we're taking all the job listings the employers had at the job and career fair."

Knauss is compiling the research so that individuals drawing unemployment insurance who are coded with a specific code would be contacted to alert them of available positions.

"Then we'll know the gap by having whatever individuals you have in the area that have that particular code," Knauss said. "Then you're able to make a decision based on your shortfall of individuals within the specific O-net code as to whether or not you're going to develop training programs so you have enough people in that pool to fill your employer need within the community."

By getting all the codes and the facts, Knauss said a clearer snapshot would be provided of the area's demographics, what it has and doesn't have, to provide training opportunities to fill gaps for the talent not trained with the specific codes.

Jim Flores of Flores Construction, the company working on the REC Silicon expansion, said finding housing for construction workers is still a work in process. The company is leveling out its peak construction time so there would not be the 1,000 craft people on site at one time in the fall, he said, in order to cut down on transportation issues.

Those in attendance addressed an apparent image issue for the area, but noted it appears to be changing. Flores said recruitment efforts for workers for the construction industry seem to be garnering attention from inexperienced workers or older, more mature workers with families looking to settle down.

The area doesn't have a lot to offer compared to a larger city for those people in between, he said.

Moses Lake School District Special Assistant to the Superintendent P.J. De Benedetti said the school district recruited at job fairs in Seattle and Spokane looking for teachers.

"It seemed to be a little less of a problem this year than it has in the past," he said. "I don't know if the reputation's changing or how people perceive the environment they live in is changing, but it does seem to be getting better."

When Grant County PUD Assistant Manager Michael Woywod recently moved into the area from Maryland, he and his wife were sitting near another couple from Washington on an airplane. The couple asked why they would make such a move. It was a reaction similar to other reactions the Woywods received.

"Sort of like we were coming into this area that has this blight attached to it, this dark cloud," he said. "It was strange because we've not found it to be that way but for whatever reason, there's still sort of this overall feeling out there that this particular spot is just not a place you want to come."

Basin Employment Service Training owner Bill Chambers said it's in the area's favor that an activity is scheduled for every weekend over the summer, and the Grant County Fairgrounds is sold out to recreational vehicle spots and camp spots through September.

"We've got a lot of people coming here for different reasons," Chambers said. "Like the dog shows, they're coming in just to come to the dog shows. But they only do that four hours, and the other 16 hours, they're looking around town. That's an opportunity we're going to try to work with."

The next meeting is held June 1.