Tom Husted sometimes finds himself looking forward to long, cold Northeast winters. Admittedly, there’s a selfish reason.
“The colder the winter back East, the better recruitment is in the spring for us,” he said. “At some point in time, people just get tired of shoveling snow.”
Husted is CEO of Pahrump’s Valley Electric Association, a utility cooperative that has increased its workforce 38 percent since 2010. Over the past couple of years, Valley Electric has picked up new business from Creech Air Force Base and the Nevada National Security Site, and has expanded other contracts. So, Husted is on the lookout for top talent.
He has several skilled technical positions to fill — electric substation technicians, engineering technicians and dispatchers, to name a few. He’d like to hire locally, but admits many of his employees come from out of state, as his team taps a national network of utility industry professionals.
The good news is that, overall, there are more employers like Husted in the looking to hire. The challenge is finding the right fit between employer and employee in the post-recession economy.
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Las Vegas’ stubbornly high unemployment rate is declining. In April, state unemployment was at 8 percent, down from 8.5 percent in March and 10.1 percent a year earlier. The Las Vegas metropolitan area’s unemployment rate dropped significantly to 7.3 percent in April, compared with 8.7 percent in March and 9.8 percent in 2013.
According to UNLV’s Center for Business and Economic Research, the Las Vegas metro area is home to 870,000 jobs, up from 797,200 in January 2011, the low point of the recession. At the economic peak in November 2006, that number was 929,300.
“Looking at Southern Nevada as a whole, everything is improving,” said the center’s director, Stephen Brown.
Some job gains are coming from the long-languishing construction sector. As of early May, there were about 41,000 construction jobs in Southern Nevada, an increase of about 6,000 from January 2012 but a long way off 2006, when those jobs numbered 100,000-plus.
“There was an old joke a couple of years ago about a 40 percent increase on nothing still being nothing,” Brown laughed.
Nonetheless, Brown says projects including Caesars Entertainment’s Linq, the SLS Las Vegas and several retail sites are driving construction job gains. He also said home building and smaller specialty contractors account for some of the gains.
Professional services and leisure and hospitality each added about 8,000 jobs in the past year, Brown said.
Strip operators constantly looking to reinvent restaurant and entertainment concepts could factor into the boost in hospitality jobs. Food and beverage hires are a big part of MGM Resorts International’s hiring efforts, said Gail Carmona, executive director of talent and organizational development.
MGM Resorts has about 1,500 job openings, the majority of which are food and beverage related, she said. About 450 resumes come in per week. The difficulty is matching a candidate’s skills and personality to a certain venue.
“We have a really strong talent supply locally,” Carmona said. “The challenge comes with paring the talent to the roles. We can teach you how to be a cocktail server or a casino host, but we need you to come in with that desire, where you’re thinking about the guest the moment you hit the floor to the end of your shift.”
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Growth in professional service businesses can fuel a variety of jobs.
Tim Quillin, president of Quillin Advertising, Public Relations and Social Media, has a couple of job openings — one for a public relations account executive and another for a social media manager. Both positions pay between $45,000 and $50,000 annually.
Quillin has reviewed dozens of resumes in the past few months, with little luck. Too often, people who may have been in basic customer service roles think they have the skills for public relations, he said. And although social media is popular for many as a hobby, having a Facebook or Twitter account isn’t enough to land you a job in social media. He needs professionals who understand running social media campaigns for clients. He’d also like to minimize training, if possible, he said.
“We really haven’t had a lot of success hiring in these areas,” he said.
Soozi Jones-Walker, president of Commercial Executive Real Estate Services, is looking for a personal assistant, a position that pays between $38,000 and $40,000 and requires strong secretarial skills, she said.
Jones-Walker said she is surprised at how many resumes she gets that lack cover letters and by the overall sloppiness of applications.
“It’s as if people didn’t brush up on their skills during the recession,” she said. “It’s a difficult market for employers looking for truly skilled, energetic and open-minded employees.”
Navigating the post-recession job market is easier for job seekers who retool not only their skill sets, but also their salary expectations, said Debra Collins, program manager for the adult and dislocated worker program at Workforce Connections.
“It’s getting a lot better now, but a couple of years ago, we really had to have a lot of very hard conversations (about salary) with people,” she said.
Employers sometimes contend with a wage disconnect too, as some job seekers have yet to adjust their wage expectations to today’s economy. They are often overqualified, perhaps with past executive experience, Quillin said.
“We had someone come in who wanted to start at $90,000-$100,000. They came out of a hotel company. Obviously, we couldn’t accommodate,” he said.
On the training front, options are available, said Lizette Guillen, who works for Nevada Partners, an affiliate of Workforce Connections, a job-training resource agency.
“I think we have enough training providers, I just don’t think people know about them as much as they should,” she said.
Guillen suggested nvworkforceconnections.org and nevada211.org as starting points for people looking for training.
Collins also said displaced workers continue to retrain for jobs in health care fields.
Southern Nevada added 3,000 health care jobs over the past couple of years, and unlike many fields, Collins said the health care sector has grown consistently despite the recession.
And although Nevada’s workforce has sometimes been criticized for its lack of skill, not all employers with highly skilled positions to fill are complaining.
Jim Gist, chief sales and marketing officer for local engineering firm JBA Consulting Engineers, said his company has added about 70 positions over the past two years.
Gist says his firm has a great relationship with the UNLV College of Engineering, and his employees are about evenly split between local and out of state.
“We’re pretty lucky. We’re able to find a lot in Nevada, and others really see advantages to moving to Nevada,” he said.
Gist said hiring today is a refreshing change of pace from the economic boom times when companies were desperate for help.
“We’re not looking for paper pushers,” he said. “We’re looking for creative people with drive. Back then, when you’re hiring so fast, it can really cause problems.”