My dad used to tell me, usually after a tough day, that if it weren’t for employees and customers, he would really love his business. It made me laugh, until I was provided an opportunity to hire talent. Of all the things I’ve done professionally over the years, hiring – and hiring right – is among the toughest.
The Abilene Chamber is lucky, perhaps blessed to have the best trained and most dedicated professionals of any Chamber anywhere. I’m truly proud of and grateful for each of them. But I have to say, the thought of being faced with the challenge of hiring today, given the full-employment state of our community and knowing that available, skilled workforce is perhaps our chief economic development challenge, worries me. And it’s not just me. Many of our Chamber members have the same concern. In fact, this isn’t an Abilene problem. It’s a national problem.
And while there are a boatload of resources out there – the truth of the matter is that few if any – are Abilene specific. Where do you turn to post your job opening that reaches multiple markets, including exiting military members, students, young professionals and literally anyone else who wants to be a part of the Abilene story?
Some time ago, a small group of folks gathered at the Chamber to discuss how could we best address the growing recruitment challenge. How can Abilene businesses, and most importantly to me our Chamber members, post an opportunity and find the right people without competing with a gazillion other companies across America for the same talent?
Members, meet AbileneWorks.com. AbileneWorks.com is a product of the Abilene Chamber, designed and engineered to help you – the risk takers and the job creators of our community – find the talent you need, when you need it. It’s for you. And it isn’t available to businesses outside of Abilene.
AbileneWorks.com is your brand new, free, go-to online resource to find both local talent, and talent within the communities, institutions and military installations that have the potential to help.
Born from the Chamber’s long-standing commitment to help address the workforce shortage, AbileneWorks.com provides a unique, Abilene-centric user interface for both the employer and the prospective employee. As a job creator/provider, simply post your opening and the Chamber and the technology that drives the algorithm does the rest.
With plans to make AbileneWorks.com a top-of-mind resource for military installations in Texas, Oklahoma and beyond, our hope is that we can optimize your recruiting process and help you to grow your company through the help of this new tool. In simple terms, we want to make it easy for family members of incoming Dyess personnel, installations across Texas and Oklahoma, colleges and universities and casual job seekers to find meaningful employment in Abilene. The Chamber’s motivation is simple: we want to help build workforce capacity so our community can grow.
Here’s the challenge: after months and months of development, we’re ready to roll it out. But AbileneWorks.com will only be as successful as the job opportunities that are posted on it. Afterall, any self-respecting job seeker who visits the site to find an opportunity won’t come back a second time if there aren’t jobs available. Make sense?
So this is where you come in.
I hope you’ll take the time to learn more about AbileneWorks.com, and perhaps engage those within your enterprise who participate in the hiring process to understand the benefits of AbileneWorks.com and the simplicity of how it works.
Our Chamber staff is on standby to help answer any questions you may have. In fact, if you have an opportunity where we can come and share this with your staff or fellow community members, please let us know. And, if you’re one of our larger employers who have their own job portal, give us a call. We’d be happy to explore ways that we can partner.
AbileneWorks.com is but one of many initiatives underway that your Chamber hopes will benefit your bottom line. I hope you’ll use the product to do just that and help us to help your company and our great city to compete in an increasingly competitive hiring environment.
Onward!
Doug