By Don Nelson
Want a job? If the Methow Valley News classifieds listings are any indicator, this could be the place to find one.
The employment listings took up almost four columns in last week’s newspaper. Some of that is the usual seasonal effect: Summer is nigh, the tourists are coming, everyone in the broadly defined hospitality industry needs help. The competition for reliable candidates to fill critical customer service jobs at lodging and dining establishments is fierce. Contrary to popular assumptions, there are a fair number of those positions that either start as full-time or have the potential to develop into full-time jobs. At the same time, the hours can be demanding and the commuting distances challenging: what’s the cost-benefit ratio (or as it’s often characterized these days, the “value proposition”) of driving a lot of miles to a relatively low-paying job that requires weekend and/or evening hours?
The local job market is not all about seasonal positions that – traditionally – trend toward the lower end of the wage scale. There are also more than a few of what might be called professional positions, requiring some combination of experience and knowledge to qualify for responsible jobs with established companies or organizations.
So there is a need for high-quality employees on every part of the jobs spectrum, which creates the prototypical Methow Valley quandary: finding good candidates in what is a relatively small and competitive labor pool, populated by people who may have other interests (recreational, mainly) that conflict with what we think of as a traditional job structure.
Hiring here is harder than you might think, unless you are a hirer who has experienced it. You may get applicants who are enthusiastic, or who seem capable, or who have the potential to develop into what you need — but aren’t an exact fit. Word of mouth and good contacts can help. Sometimes you just get lucky. The two most recent hires at the Methow Valley News were somewhat serendipitous. One, a valley resident, had just left another local company and was looking for a different opportunity. The other had just moved to the Methow and was still getting settled. Both happened to meet our needs extremely well, and we didn’t hesitate to bring them on board — because who knew when we’d come across equally qualified people who were already here?
Of course, the classifieds and various other job boards, listings and employment services don’t account for the vacillations of the less-visible (and less predictable) labor market — what we might call the underground or cash economy. Most of us have sought out people to help us with limited or one-time needs — we’re not looking to hire, but we are looking for independent operators who make a living, however cobbled together, taking care of things we can’t, or don’t want to, take care of ourselves.
Another complication in the hiring process is the evolving notion of how “work” and “jobs” are defined. More people work at home, or split their jobs with others, or expect an accommodating attitude from management.
As a self-employed, multi-tasking owner of a small company in a troubled industry, I appreciate the value of flexibility and versatility in the workplace. For many years, I was the editor of a daily newspaper — one of the most specialized and hard-to-come-by jobs in America, demanding not only journalistic competence but also management expertise. There are more professional football players in the country than there are daily newspaper editors. Fortunately, I never had to demonstrate how fast I could run a 40-yard dash.
Not that I’m looking for work — I already have several jobs at the newspaper and my boss (that would be me) wouldn’t appreciate my adding to an already way-more-than-40-hours-a-week work load — but it is interesting to peruse the job listings and wonder what they’d be like. As an overqualified and undertrained (by digital standards) journalist who’s worked in one profession for his entire career, I’m not sure what I’d offer. The listings in the News specify the need for cheerful, motivated, customer-friendly, skilled, adaptable, dependable candidates — the “right person” to “join our team.”
For the sake of all Methow Valley hirers, I hope they quickly find exactly that person. And then manage to keep them around for a while.
