COFFEYVILLE —A steady stream of job seekers filed through the second major job fair to be held in Montgomery County in the past five weeks. Prompted by announcements that Amazon.com and Southwire Company — two of the region’s largest employers — will close their doors for good early next year, Coffeyville Community College played host to more than two dozen interested employers.
Unlike the first fair, which was limited to Montgomery County employers, Thursday’s event, held in the larger of the college’s two gymnasiums, was open to all area employers, and drew four of Allen County’s most prominent.
Mike Taylor, human resources manager at B & W Trailer Hitches, arrived with a stack of applications and a pile of complimentary drawstring totes. According to Taylor, the Humboldt-based company has a handful of immediate openings for welders, and expects an additional 15 to 20 openings, of various description, come spring. The company also plans to inaugurate a new, large-scale “powder coating system” by mid-summer, which alone, said Taylor, will probably necessitate a new round of hiring.
Kim Ellis and Emily Baughn, of Russell Stover Candies, plied potential recruits with brightly wrapped chocolates in an effort to persuade qualified applicants onto the books at the nation’s third largest chocolate manufacturer (behind Hershey and Mars). According to Ellis, most of the roughly 30 openings available at the Iola plant are evening shift positions.
The Register published in-depth stories on both companies’ hiring efforts in a series that ran last week.
With the removal of Amazon, Gates Corporation moves up the list of the largest employers in southeast Kansas. According to Shanna Eck, who was on hand to describe the company’s available positions, Gates has “about 633 full-time employees” and is looking for an additional 38 to 40.
Most of those openings are off-shift positions, a fact which, according to Eck, contributes to the company’s high turnover. “That’s why we find it hard to get people to come in and to stay on the job. Coming in evening and nights, having a family, is very hard. I feel for the guys who have to work those shifts. I just wish we could get them to stay longer.”
Eck has been with Gates for 20 years and, early on, worked her own fair share of nights. The progression from night shift to day shift is based on seniority. “I was lucky enough, when I was in that position, that I worked on it only for about three years. The problem is — we used to be about 300 to 400 people. Now, we’ve got from 600 to 700 people. So, now, your timeframe of getting a day shift is about 15 years.”
Eck visited with applicants at the job fair who would consider relocating to Iola, as well those who would commute. Eck herself commutes from Fort Scott.
“We have decent pay,” Eck said, when asked why a long drive to Gates would be worth the trouble for a prospective employee, “but I think we have the best benefits around.”
Especially when considering the advantages the company extends to the least-credentialed portion of the labor force. Gates requires of its workers only a GED and offers, according to Eck, on-the-job training at every level inside the plant.
None of which solves the company’s retention woes. Eck, herself a trainer, explains the all-too-frequent process by which a new hire swiftly becomes a lapsed employee. “We have about two inches of a new hire packet that we sit down and go through. During that first week, you learn a lot. Then we have trainers on the floor that help as well. Basically, [the new employee] will be on a day shift job with a trainer for about two weeks, and that goes fine, but then they go to the night shift and that’s when you see the turnover.”
Eck and her colleagues were recently told of a proposed expansion of the plant’s facilities. “We’ll need the 38 people just for the inside of our plant now — then we’ll need more coming up…. Hopefully, we get a slew coming through today.”
Precision International has avoided the mire of high turnover of the sort that persists at Gates and Russell Stover. According to plant manager, Justin Defebaugh, and business development manager, Brett Dillman, the Iola-based company is currently in the market for around 10 new production-oriented employees.
And Dillman expects, “with the oil and gas thing picking up in Q2 and Q3,” to see that number grow.
Defebaugh estimates the company has already hired 10 new employees since Precision regained the company from Cameron in early July, “and so far we’ve gotten pretty good results.” He says the drug test, which many outsiders perceive as a barrier to employment in the region, is a non-issue. “Everybody we’ve interviewed and tested has passed the drug test.”
