New Orleans Business Alliance President and CEO Rodrick Miller urged local readers to use job site WorkNOLA.com in an email blast earlier today. The site highlights and supports the workforce community in New Orleans, including many startups and technology companies. It’s a sleek and accesible site that Miller believes is an essential tool for the community. It currently has around 500 job postings.
Enter Miller…
“One of the best kept secrets of New Orleans is the fact that we have hundreds of quality jobs available within an array of industries. We have to work together to reveal this particular secret; New Orleans is one of the best cities in the nation today for jobs.
Over the past few years, the new New Orleans has evolved into a brain magnet, which is in contrast to the New Orleans of the 1980’s, 1990’s and 2005 when much of our talent left the city to seek out other opportunities.Native New Orleanians living in California, Texas, New York, Maryland, Georgia, and other states around the country, and the world, are interested in returning home; however, many don’t believe New Orleans businesses are able to offer them competitive and progressive job opportunities.
The New Orleans of today is home to new and expanding businesses that are in an aggressive hiring mode including the VA Hospital, GE Capital, Shell and Harrah’s, to name a few. There are also a number of workforce initiatives underway in the City offering programs to support both job seekers and employers. These programs provide guidance as well as job placement assistance for those seeking to work in the New Orleans market.
One of the most exciting initiatives to support workforce in New Orleans isWorkNOLA.com. Ownership of WorkNOLA.com was assumed by GNO, Inc. and it was retooled in 2012. WorkNOLA now functions as a dynamic tool that matches professional job seekers with employers in a manner similar to Match.com. Compared to Monster.com and other similar job search sites, WorkNOLA has an added advantage because it only posts jobs that are located in the Greater New Orleans region, and it is free of charge. The goal of WorkNOLA is to promote New Orleans’ available jobs to current residents, prospective transplants. and to natives interested in returning home.
Today, NOLABA is calling the New Orleans business community to action. We are asking you to use WorkNOLA as a key recruiting tool for hiring professionals who are seeking job opportunities in New Orleans. The more local jobs are housed on WorkNOLA, the more we can demonstrate as a business community that there are quality jobs in New Orleans. By using WorkNOLA, you may find that you are able to identify well suited candidates for your open positions and fill those positions in a timelier manner. Businesses interested in using WorkNOLA to promote current job openings should check out this video to learn more about the site: http://vimeo.com/
For job seekers who want to secure a professional job in New Orleans, we are asking that you actively use the site and share the site with friends and family who may be interested in the New Orleans market. Job seekers should watch this video, which details WorkNOLA’s features and provides instructions on how to use the site: http://vimeo.com/
For more information about WorkNOLA, read the article below which features a Q&A session with the site manager, 504ward’s Executive Director Jessica Shahien. The article highlights 504ward’s mission, vision and goals for promoting economic development. We have also put together a short article for this newsletter about additional workforce development programs in New Orleans. Alright NOLA, lets get to work!”
Here is the link to the article featuring the question and answer session with Shahien.