When readers of the Sunday paper open their editions this weekend they might notice an unusual ad—a postcard, actually, exhorting expats from the Bayou State to “Come Home, Louisiana.”
The postcards will be appearing in Sunday dailies across the state. They’re designed for locals to fill out and send to far-flung friends and relatives, who may not be aware that Louisiana is on the cusp of an economic boom and has thousands of good jobs it desperately needs to fill.
The postcards are but one element of a nationwide, multimedia campaign sponsored by Louisiana Economic Development, which is trying to encourage former Louisiana residents to explore the new employment opportunities here and, it is hoped, return home to take advantage of them.
The campaign is directly tied to LED’s recently launched website—LouisianaJobConnection.com—that matches the skills of job seekers with the best available Louisiana jobs. Already, thousands of jobs are available on the site. Thousands more will be posted in the coming months. The state has never done anything like this before, so there’s no way to know how successful it will be, but LED Secretary Stephen Moret is optimistic.
“We’ve never before had such a simple, powerful platform available to job seekers to search for professional and technical jobs,” he says.
LED is spending a total of $2.4 million on the job connection program, most of which will be dedicated to online and social media promotions. Just a small portion so far has gone to the postcard campaign, but more may be allocated, depending on how successful it is. If the campaign drives substantial volume, Moret says LED will continue it into 2015. —Stephanie Riegel
