It’s no secret: Louisiana is badly in need of industrial laborers.
The demand has put pressure on—and brought significant growth to—not only the companies themselves, but to a sector to which they often turn for employment needs: industrial recruiting.
LINK Staffing Services, founded in 1980 in Houston, Texas, has 45 locations across the country, including one in Baton Rouge. LINK began as an industrial staffing only employment agency and continues to staff jobs in several categories, including administration, health care, renewable energy, and retail, among others.
“Our niche is industrial staffing,” says LINK Branch Manager Marcie Boudreaux. “We started doing the industrial, skilled, semi-skilled, light industrial, and administrative support staffing.”
Even with the high demand for industrial jobs, Boudreaux says the challenge is in finding skilled workers qualified for the companies in need.
“The work is so intense now,” Boudreaux says. “[Companies] don’t have time to train someone. They need the skilled workers, and a lot of your old trades, your press operators, millwrights. Those breeds are dying, yet we still have companies that need them.”
TrueBlue Energy and Industrial, part of True Blue Inc., connects more than 375,000 workers to jobs every year. With a specialty in industrial jobs, TrueBlue, too, has experienced a greater demand for workers in the last five years.
“There’s a lot of work coming up in Louisiana and Texas,” says Howard Aronson, vice president of sales for TrueBlue. “Our largest challenge is finding a productive, skilled workforce, as more people are retiring from this trade than coming into the trade every day.”
No matter how quickly technology advances, companies aren’t without the need of blue-collar employees willing to work with their hands.
“I hate to single people out, but today’s generation wants to sit behind a desk,” Boudreaux says. “They want to go to college for four years, and then get a desk job. We still need those hands-on workers, and that’s where our challenges are.”
Boudreaux says training in some specialties and skills remains an impediment to recruitment.
“Who’s teaching our kids to go to school to be a carpenter?” Boudreaux says. “We have people who want to learn, but there’s not a lot of companies that will train. There’s no time to train because of the productivity demands.”
MEANS TO AN END
Capital Region staffing agencies employ a variety of methods for recruiting workers and connecting them with jobs.
At TrueBlue, potential employees enter their information online. If their qualifications meet the needs of a TrueBlue client, the employee is contacted by TrueBlue.
“We have to get a hold of their resume first,” Aronson says. “We’ve got a big database of workers, and we’re constantly looking for more. We reach out to them when we have a project, and if they’re interested in the job, we provide full benefits for our workers.”
LINK also collects potential employee information, but also focuses on an assessment before the hiring process advances.
“There’s a 76-question pre-employment survey,” Boudreaux says. “It asks questions about their moral character and work ethic. If we have five people come in for the survey, we may have three that get through to the application.”
After the application comes a detailed interview, as well as a functional assessment to ensure the potential employee meets any physical job requirements, including standing, squatting, climbing a ladder and lifting up to 35 pounds.
With any industrial job, safety is a concern and often a core value for staffing agencies dealing with these types of jobs.
“We work with our customers to ensure the sites are safe and drug-free,” Aronson says. “We cater our frame of reference for each site, we assesses the work site, and work with customers. If [the company doesn’t] meet the criteria, we don’t always do business with everyone that comes to us. We have the ability to pick and choose, and an expectation that site is safe and secure, and they would expect the same for us.”
TrueBlue and LINK ensure employees are drug-free, and comply with all Occupational Safety & Health Administration regulations to aid in a safe working environment.
While industrial job openings continue to grow, recruiters may start to wonder about the future of how to fill the vacant positions. Outside of bringing in new workers, staffing agencies can also work to help their employees advance in their job placement.
“I will go to the company and ask, ‘Do you think it’s worth your time to train this person to be more of a skilled worker?’” Boudreaux says. “That way, they don’t have to go through hiring costs again, since it’s easier to replace a general laborer.”
Recruiters don’t expect the challenges to meeting hiring demands for skilled trades to be eliminated anytime soon.
“We need to reach out more to the young adults in high school,” Boudreaux says. “Not everybody is qualified to go to college, so we should try to get them into ABC schools or trade schools and bring back that dying generation.”
