Hiring heats up in Springfield

Businesses across several Springfield industries are in hiring mode, leading to what could be an increasingly competitive recruitment environment.

Since April, a total of 12 companies have held job fairs at the Missouri Career Center.

Roughly 640 applicants turned out during back-to-back May job fairs looking to fill the roughly 550 positions Mercy Springfield Communities is seeking.

“We were very pleased. We were really impressed with the candidates that came through,” said Laura Starks, Mercy director of talent selection for the Springfield area.

Hoping to fill at least 80 positions during the fair, Starks said 100 job offers were made as a result.

“And we are still going. We continue to review those candidates and those files. We still have openings,” she said.

Mercy, the largest employer in the Springfield metropolitan area according to Springfield Business Journal research, needs roughly 250 new hires for its $115 million south-side orthopedic hospital expected to open this fall. The health care system, which employs roughly 9,000 people in the Springfield area, is hiring around 425 people at any given time to cover jobs lost through attrition, Starks said.

According to the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce, five companies were looking to hire more than 1,000 workers last month, including Mercy, T-Mobile, TeleTech Holdings Inc., Wyndham Worldwide Corp. and Prime Inc. So far in June, Spinnaker Resorts, J.P. Morgan Chase and Tracker Marine have held hiring events at the center and local transportation and delivery companies are working together to host their own job fair to cover local driver needs from 8:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. June 27 at the center.  

Cynthia Collins, business services representative for the career center in Springfield, said demand for hiring events has been strong this spring compared to April through June 2012. She said in recent years, she has helped organize a group-hiring event in May, but this year, the call for job fairs in April caused plans to change. The good news, she said, is businesses across several industries including health care, transportation and telecommunications industries are driving employment needs.

“We’ve had T-Mobile, Mediacom, J.P. Morgan Chase, so everyone is looking for someone,” Collins said.

Parker McKenna, president of the Springfield Area Human Resources Association, said skilled positions continue to be in demand with local recruiters.

“Skilled labor, especially talking about engineering, (information technology) – those industries, specifically, are seeing growth,” McKenna said. “Those needs though are sort of insulated despite economic factors, but certainly when unemployment goes down the community continues to see growth and need in those areas.”

Employers in the state added 4,600 jobs in May, including 3,600 jobs in the construction industry, a sign that could indicate increasing confidence in the economy. Nationwide, the construction industry added 7,000 jobs last month as the construction unemployment rate dipped to 10.8 percent, its lowest rate since October 2008, according to the U.S. Labor Department.

On the IT side, network and computer systems administrators are expected to see their ranks grow by 28 percent between 2010 and 2020, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

At Mercy, three building projects, worth $175 million in south Springfield and Branson, alongside increasing demand for nurses and occupational therapists should keep the hospital system busy seeking qualified workers for years to come.

At the May hiring events, Mercy was seeking workers interested in environmental and food services, as well as lab assistants and patient-care providers, but common needs for Mercy include more specialized positions such as registered nurses and occupational therapists, Starks said.

“It is a very competitive environment with registered nurses right now, as well as with therapy services,” she said.

According to the Missouri State Board of Nursing, there are nearly 100,000 actively licensed RNs in the state.

With 2.7 million across the U.S., RNs comprise the largest health care occupation in the country, according to the BLS, and employment of registered nurses is expected to increase 26 percent between 2010 and 2020, faster than the average for all occupations. During that time, more than 12,100 new registered nurses are expected to be added to Missouri’s workforce.

The job outlook for occupational therapists is also strong.

In 2010, there were more than 108,000 occupational therapists in the U.S. and that number is expected to grow by 33 percent through 2020.

The median pay in 2010 for the position that requires a master’s degree and a state license was $72,320, according to the BLS. Employment website Indeed.com lists 723 current openings across Missouri and 61 in Springfield.

To help connect job seekers with employers, Collins said she also works with local higher education institutions advising schools on which companies are looking for talent.

“We contact them as to make sure their students know about what’s coming up, so they have opportunities for employment,” Collins said.

While the overall job market is improving, McKenna said it is too soon to say the demand for jobs is putting a strain on local human resources professionals.

“I don’t think we are to that point, yet. We’ve had those recruitment needs before and will continue to have those recruitment needs. I think they might be a little bit more highlighted than before,” he said. “But I don’t think we’ve seen an outcry from employers that they have experienced, in general, more difficulty with recruiting because of lower unemployment.”