LATCareers.com President Chris Dugan is interviewed for the Businessreport.com article titled Hitting the bricks

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

 “I’m a motivated person,” she says after the presentation. “Whatever I can put my mind to, I can accomplish.”

Rollins came to an August recruiting event for Liberty National Life Insurance, which billed the gathering as part of a one-day blitz to add 2,500 sales agents and managers nationwide.

She says the initial training the company expects her to underwrite puts her in a dilemma, because the laid-off health insurance administrative needs income “right here, today”—not a new $400 bill to pay.

“That’s a lot of money when you’re unemployed,” she says. “Overall, it looks like a great opportunity.”

A spate of local hiring events seems to give weight to the idea that the Capital Region is creating jobs while other parts of the country slash and burn positions to cope with economic contraction, although things here run hot and cold.

The Baton Rouge Area Chamber said late last month the region’s unemployment rate went down slightly from June to July, coupled with an increase in year-over-year nonfarm job growth, per data from the Louisiana Workforce Commission. The region outperformed the state and national unemployment rates.

Liberty National had other “we’re hiring” events in Lafayette, Mandeville and Metairie. Locally, branch manager Marian Keith says she hopes to add 25 to 50 people through the drive.

“Our company grew 42% last year,” she says. “I have one unit manager right now who has a team of about nine working agents. I would like to have at least three [teams] by the end of the year.”

Engineering firm Enercon Services last month held two days of interviews, attracting more than 100 candidates on Day One.

On Day Two, a hotel conference room gradually fills with about 20 people, then 30, 40, perhaps 50 hopefuls with resumés in hand, from fresh-faced beginners to gray-haired vets. If there are jobs to be had, it seems they need them.

“I’m just wondering if these people are employed or not. I’ve been out since March,” says Wayne Nichols, looking around the room. “Every day, I get on the Internet to look.”

The contract structural designer from Mobile, Ala., says he came to Baton Rouge about eight years ago and recently worked for URS, which does engineering for power providers Southern Company and the Tennessee Valley Authority.

 

But “that work was pulled from the Baton Rouge office and sent to Denver,” he says, so he’s chasing down another contract.

Through the years he says he’s been lured from his home state and elsewhere to several local opportunities in petrochemical engineering—“You could just tell there was a lot more work here”—although he knows well how the market ebbs and flows.

Robert Thweatt relocated from California to manage Enercon’s local office, which opened in February 2008. He says despite flutters in fossil fuel demand, his company chose to switch its center of operations for Louisiana power plants from Atlanta to a local site, close to plants in New Orleans and St. Francisville.

“Last year, the economy was still good,” he says, adding, “Nuclear has been picking up a lot.”

Through the recruiting drive, Enercon will hire about 12 engineers in the near-term and a dozen more down the road, he says. Of course, the growth spurt benefits Thweatt, too: He lived in New Orleans for about a decade and says he grew tired of cool, foggy weather on California’s Central Coast.

“I was ready to get back. To tell you the truth, I missed the heat,” he says.

The state workforce commission planned to host a job fair last month at a local hotel with 30 or so employers. Anecdotally, Bob Hartman with the agency’s veterans unit says he’s seen an increased turnout in vets coming to him for help finding anther job since around April.

Before then, he saw people come in early in the week and taper off, yet lately he says, “Every day at 8 a.m., we have 20, 25 people lined up out there.” He figures construction mostly is to blame and hopes things tick up by the first quarter of 2010, although LWC said late last month that construction jobs are on the rise.

Another career fair with about 10 companies was projected to attract around 600 job seekers Sept. 9 at Embassy Suites.

“There’s been a lot of pockets of growth that we’ve seen,” says Chris Dugan, president of LATCareers.com, which will sponsor that event. “We’ve seen wireless companies in certain markets have stabilized, especially in Louisiana and the whole Southeast.”

He says Verizon Wireless will be at the fair looking for retail and call center help, while State Farm Insurance needs operations center staff members and Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance needs “agent owners.” Also scheduled to recruit are the Secret Service and the FBI, who Dugan says are trying to diversify their ranks.

 

Back at the Liberty National event, Jennifer Payton ponders whether insurance sales will fill the gap after her packaging plant job with Brown-Eagle Group dried up. Still, she says her work experience gave her the confidence to soldier on.

“I’m only 20 years old. It taught me how to be independent,” Payton says. “I was always one to try something new.”

Keith says the insurance industry can grow even as people lose jobs because those folks also lose company insurance policies and may seek individual plans in case of worse hardship ahead.

The New Orleans native temporarily came to Baton Rouge after Hurricane Katrina and opened the local sales office in March. She did management for the asbestos removal and construction fields but hit a dry spell and decided to give insurance a try. She says her quality of life has bloomed since she gambled on commission work over a steady paycheck.

“If I seem overzealous, it’s because it’s made such a difference in my life,” she says in her hiring spiel, recalling how she sold herself on the gig. “I’m 50 years old, I’m out of a job. Why not?”

Chuck Marceaux also came to the event. He has a long resumé, including a stint in the White House travel office during the Nixon and Ford years. He also was executive director of Louisiana’s state licensing board for contractors and had an insurance sales license that lapsed in the ’80s.

Now he is thinking about selling insurance once more.

“I have four daughters and five grandchildren,” he says, “a lot of people depending on me to make it. I haven’t lost my spirit.”