Rural countrysides. A small-town pace of daily living. Community schools. Fresh air. Town squares.
The selling points of a Hoosier quality of life were a subtext of Indiana State University’s Spring Career Fair on Wednesday in Hulman Center. The annual event lured 132 employers to Terre Haute. Companies and public agencies need qualified workers to fill a variety of full-time positions and internships. The job market is tight, meaning the economy has more vacant jobs than appropriately trained workers to fill them.
Employers and the communities where they operate must market themselves to prospective employees (in this case, soon-to-graduate ISU students), and vice versa.
Towns in Arizona, North Dakota, Texas, Oregon and Washington, as well as Detroit exhibit the hottest job growth, according to a recent CNBC report. Employers at the ISU Career Fair emphasized the upsides of Hoosier towns such as Columbus, Seymour and North Vernon. They came equipped with the ultimate goal, jobs and internships, an automatic attention-getter for students in the homestretch of the college careers.
Allison Quintero represented one of those companies Wednesday. She’s a human resource development rep for Aisin U.S.A. Manufacturing. The firm makes automotive components at its facility in Seymour, population 17,500. The manufacturer also recruits workers at Rose-Hulman, Purdue University and Vincennes University. The lifestyle in the town that produced Rock and Roll Hall of Famer John Mellencamp and Miss America 2009 Katie Stam resonates with some of the twenty-somethings.
“Seymour’s a great place. It’s a small town, but it’s a great place to raise kids,” Quintero said. Southern Indiana is centrally located between large metros Louisville, Cincinnati and Indianapolis, for those inclined to taste big-city events on weekend outings, she pointed out. The cost of living is lower, too. “You can buy a house for a very good rate,” she said.
Quintero understands the choices. She grew up in California, where the median list price for a home stands at $422,500 (the nation’s second highest), compared to Indiana’s $163,233 (34th nationally), according to 24/7 Wall Street. Quintero’s large family lived in one house. She came to the Hoosier state to get her degree at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, and landed her job with Aisin in Seymour.
Seymour, a place that Mellencamp celebrated in his classic song “Small Town,” Quintero has a 2-1/2-bath townhouse. “And I can do that all on my own,” she said.
So, she and the Aisin representatives spoke with students at the Career Fair about openings at the company — five quality engineer positions, three manufacturing engineer spots, along with jobs that require a two-year associate’s degree in tool-and-die, machining and electrical maintenance. Engineer hires can expect to earn salaries from $53,000 to $60,000, Quintero said.
Those hires will receive overtime pay and get assistance with relocating to Seymour. Perks help. “The job market is super tight,” Quintero said. Indeed, the December unemployment rate in Indiana was a scant 3.4 percent, while the Terre Haute metro’s stood at 3.7 percent. Bartholomew County, where Columbus is located, was even lower — 2.3 percent.
Governor Eric Holcomb said Bartholomew had 1,400 unfilled jobs in January, the Columbus Republic reported.
The Harmon Group operates a trio of Indiana businesses, including two within a short drive of Seymour. Taylor Brothers Construction is based in Columbus, 20 miles north of Seymour, and Harmon Construction in North Vernon, 15 miles west of Seymour. Another branch, Harmon Steel, is in Indianapolis. Each outlet needs one or two full-time project engineers, as well as a summer interns.
“There’s a shortage of people in project management and in the field,” said Mike Pritchett, vice president of Harmon Steel.
One plus Harmon’s firms can offer employees is probable job security. The company handled construction on bridges across the Ohio River from Louisville into Indiana, and Harmon constructs roads. Last year, the Indiana General Assembly approved a $1.2-billion boost in annual road funding through 2024 to revive the state’s crumbling highways, county roads and streets. A federal infrastructure bill is expected, too.
“You build new roads, and the commercial [work] follows,” Pritchett said. “I think [business created by public road funding] will be strong for 10 to 15 years. I really do.”
Another Columbus-based company, Toyota Industrial Manufacturing, came to the fair looking to fill 10 summer internship openings. Those intro situations often lead to full-time jobs later. That’s what happened for 2016 ISU Scott College of Business graduate Kesley Spicer. A symposium after an ISU job fair connected her with Toyota reps, she got an internship, her degree in supply chain management and then a full-time job at Toyota’s Columbus facility.
Spicer, a South Carolina native, is quite content to be a transplanted Hoosier in Columbus, a town of 44,061 residents and renowned for its local architecture. “I’m at Toyota for the long haul. I really love the company,” she said.
Toyota maintains a family-like work culture, and nurtures its employees’ growth, which impresses Spicer. Those strengths help attract and retain employees. “Right now, because unemployment is so low, everybody has to work hard to keep good people,” Spicer said, “and [Toyota is] right on track with that.”
Columbus civic groups undertook a campaign targeted at twenty- and thirty-something job seekers within a four-hour radius. The groups created a website, ColumbusTalent.com, which not only list job openings but also highlights cultural, recreational and historic opportunities to “find a job in an unforgettable city.” The project began in 2016, and its second phase reached nearly a half-million job hunters from December 26, 2017 to Feb. 1, the Republic reported.
ISU graduates are among the targeted prospects of Columbus-area employers. The university’s Spring Career Fair employer count rose to 132 this year from 111 a year ago. “A lot of it is due to the market, and a lot of it is people finding out about Indiana State,” said Tradara McLaurine, interim executive director of ISU’s Career Center.
It’s a talent pool that, generally, isn’t averse to taking jobs in the state. “One thing we’ve seen from our students is that they want to stay in Indiana,” McLaurine said.
Some of the young people strolling the employer kiosks on the Hulman Center concourse Wednesday were indeed open to living and working as a Hoosier.
Kendra Buchanan, a senior safety management major from Robinson, Ill., came to the fair confident that she’ll find a job in her field. “It’s constantly growing,” she said between chats with Career Fair employers. “And you’re always going to have a job — people are unsafe.” Ideally for her, such a job would be located in a small town, the setting familiar to her. But she’s realistic, too.
“I’ve never lived in a big city. I might like it. I might not,” Buchanan said. “Wherever the job takes me.”
A few minutes later, Buchanan was talking with Mike Pritchett and the Harmon Group reps.