A website launched five years ago in an effort to highlight regional job opportunities is being retired.

Jay County Development Corp. announced recently that the Hoosier Opportunity website — hoosieropportunity.com — will shut down Jan. 31.

The decision was announced in an email to employers that have set up a profile on the website, which is a partnership between Jay, Randolph and Wayne counties.

“After careful consideration, including an employer survey, we've made the decision to end operation of the Hoosier Opportunity website effective January 31st, 2022,” the email from JCDC executive director Travis Richards said. “We were at a crossroads. In order to improve performance, the website would need a complete upgrade at a significant cost. Before we invested valuable resources we wanted to find out if our efforts would be worth it. Based on employer feedback, the short answer was no.”

While official quotes were not obtained for the website upgrades, Richards estimated the cost to be at least $20,000.

The initial start-up cost for the website was $33,600 when it was being developed in 2016 and ’17. Since then, Jay, Randolph and Wayne counties have contributed $10,000 each year toward operation and upkeep for the website as well as advertising.

The employer survey sent out by Jay County Development Corp. showed only 7.7% of those who responded always used the site when posting jobs. Thirty-eight percent said they never used the site.

In addition, about 82% of respondents said shutting down the website would not negatively impact their hiring process.

Wayne County received similar responses when surveying employers in its communities.

“It was pretty stark,” Richards said.

The Jay County Development Corp. board voted in April 2016 to begin fundraising toward creating a regional jobs website in partnership with Randolph and Wayne Counties. The goal was to mimic the site off of Hometown Opportunity, a partnership between Mercer, Auglaize and Darke counties that had been successful in marketing jobs in west-central Ohio.

“I like to refer to this website really as a matchmaker service, for matching people who have jobs with people who want a job,” Bill Bradley, then executive director of JCDC, said at the time of the site’s launch in May 2017. “That’s what we’re trying to do, on a local level.”

An effort for a more of a local focus from national jobs websites and social media has changed the landscape, said Richards.

“The goal was to provide a connection point for employers and employees,” he added. “At that time there were not a lot of services out there that did that. Since that time, other services … have upped their game tremendously and they have become much more targeted.”

As of Friday, there were 37 jobs listed on Hoosier Opportunity. Nearly 300 companies have profiles on the website. (Hometown Opportunity has 624 jobs and more than 700 company profiles.)

“I think our problem was it just never caught on here like it did in Ohio,” said Richards.

Jay County Development Corp. is looking at other options to help local businesses and industries attract new employees. Currently, the lead option is creating a page within the JCDC website with a list of area companies that would include general information about jobs, required skills and wages, as well as a link to each firm’s hiring page.
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