We are Looking Forward Our Way.

We're in Studio C in the 511 Studios just south of downtown Columbus.

This is Brett. With me is Carol.

How are you? I'm good, Brett.

Thank you.

You know, we've got an interesting

conversation that we're going to have today.

The workforce, the issues in our workforce.

It's everywhere.

The questions that we have, the issues

that are out there, the problems we are trying to solve,

these issues are not necessarily new with the pandemic, but they have exacerbated.

It's just blown up in terms particularly on our shortage of workers.

So we really want to talk about this today.

We've grown to a critical level, and we

need to grab hold of all of these issues regarding our economy and the workforce.

And we see it every day in the newspaper.

We have lots to discuss.

But let me first introduce our guest, Kelly Fuller, who is the vice President of

talent and workforce development for the Columbus Chamber of Commerce.

Hello. Good afternoon and welcome back.

Yes, it's always good to have people coming back.

What the listeners miss out on is the half

hour conversation we've already had before we actually turn the mics on.

I know I need to record that stuff occasionally.

So that part put it right in the middle.

Exactly.

So Kelly has been with us before, and we've had lots of different conversations

regarding workforce development, training, all of those kinds of things.

She's one of our great experts here in our community, so we love having her.

All right, you were here before, but your

title has changed. And can you give us a bit of a background? What's going on, why

that got changed and what's going on with you?

Yeah. Well, thank you and great to see you guys.

And it's always wonderful to be in this space and part of this conversation.

Oh, my gosh, that's true. Right.

So start investing in that lipstick and lip balm again.

I know. Put your earrings back in.

Exactly. Yeah.

So what's going on at the Columbus Chamber?

As mentioned, my role is VP of Talent and Workforce development.

And what does that mean?

So if you think about the entire lifecycle

of the employee employer relationship, my role is really to help make those

connections at all those different intersects.

So if you think about if I'm a business owner and I'm trying to find talent, I can

help you find those sources of talent, those talent pipelines.

If you want to upskill and train, we can help connect you in those ways as well.

If you're looking at ways to retain because right now, as Carol mentioned,

it's tough out there to try to find people.

And once you get them on board, how do you keep them?

That's really important.

It's easier to keep someone that to try to go out and find additional new people.

So sourcing talent hiring, onboarding retention, helping to develop really good

benefit packages, which is also really important right now to job seekers.

So really my role there is just to help

our businesses understand what they can do to become employers of choice and to

understand who the providers are in the community, whether they're education

providers or social services or different agencies.

Right. And you had mentioned the retaining.

I mean, that's the thing that employers

are not only not finding new applicants, but they can't hold on to the people that

they have because everyone's kind of poaching from each other.

They are.

And, you know, you see a lot of things that kind of contribute to that.

I was working with a member just this week who had posted a really good position.

I mean, I know what this position does.

I know about this company had gotten zero

applicants, and they're like, what is wrong?

So as I'm looking at the posting, there are about 37 things that they'd like this

person to be able to do and all do it well.

And there are three things listed on the

posting that if you do those things, it will get you fired.

So I'm thinking, what is it about this

posting that would make someone want to apply to come work there?

So the Council was think about your job postings as an opportunity to market your

business, because right now the job seeker has a lot of the power.

They can be very choosy.

It's a lot like the housing market right now.

It's a seller's market.

It's hard for buyers to get in.

So sellers have more of the power.

It's kind of the same in the job seeker employer world.

The job seeker is being very discriminating about where they want to

work, and they can make demands that maybe they haven't in the past.

And our businesses aren't necessarily

always ready to make those changes that they need to do in order to be attractive.

It seems like

job postings are such a critical piece in the process, and yet it's probably the

piece that is either completely ignored or has become so huge that it's impossible to

figure out if you would fit into that organization.

Absolutely.

And what I've been coaching our businesses is it's a marketing tool.

I mean, think about this as marketing who you are.

Why does someone want to come work there?

Bring that same energy that you do when

you're talking about your product or service to the market?

It was interesting.

The company I was working with had said that.

To your point, Carol hadn't really looked at the job posting in ten years.

So it's time to dust it off and let's get it more exciting.

We used to have those conversations with employers during the recession because

they couldn't afford to have three or four people.

Instead of rethinking the jobs, they just threw three or four position descriptions

together at $10 an hour and couldn't figure out why, even in a recession, they

couldn't get people to apply for those jobs.

I think I was one of those employees back

then because I made eye contact with someone in a staff meeting one time and

suddenly inherited managing a medical program.

And I thought, well, I've been to the doctor.

That's the extent of my expertise.

You didn't miss a meeting. You were at the wrong meeting.

I was at the wrong meeting for sure.

We had a guest who is an elected official,

so I won't say anything, but his responsibilities as an elected official.

This office has the most bizarre pieces and parts that go to it.

And we finally decided that at some place

in the past, that particular elected official had missed a meeting.

Everything that everybody else didn't want to do got into that job.

So he knows who he is and shout out to

him, really, the economy is trying to move.

Yes, things are happening that are good

and positive, not just all the negative that you see in the news.

Lots of new projects going on, including

the new intel project here in central Ohio.

So we're really excited about that.

We look different than we did two years ago.

Needless to say, let's give our audience

the good news as well as what are the challenges that we're facing right now.

Yeah, how exciting, right.

And even in the President's State of the

Union address to recognize that intel is coming to central Ohio.

And what a game changer for all of us.

So I think the great opportunity the good news is you're going to see suppliers that

are going to be suppliers to intel that are maybe already here and others that

will grow or come here that will help grow our economy and grow our base.

One of the really cool things that caught my career tech education geek heart was to

look at the listing of jobs that are coming to the area through intel.

And when you look at the list, about 50%

do not require a four year degree and in some cases, not even a two year degree.

And these are highly paid, sustainable,

good jobs, doing great work that's helping all of us.

So the fact that people can get from point A to point B quickly, I might have to take

a shortterm certificate or Credentialed program and I can go to work there.

Maybe that's my end, and then I get to move up within the company.

I also think that we're going to start to

see things like how do we do a better job of resolving transportation?

Because we're going to have to be bringing

people from the hinterland out closer to where that location is going to be.

So I think we're going to start getting

more intentional, collaboratively, public and private sector to figure out how do we

resolve that, whether it is our good friends at Coda, whether it is

others in the region, whether we finally get rail to help pull some of these

workers from areas that are further away from the intel site.

And with the money coming on the infrastructure bill.

This is Opportune, right.

When you were saying many years of career advising geekart, my geekart was seen.

Number one, we're bringing back

manufacturing into Ohio when all of it had gone overseas.

And then what did we see?

But because everything had escaped to

overseas when the pandemic hit, we couldn't get things.

You're looking for toilet paper.

You're looking for paper towels?

We were looking for chips, yes.

Who better to come back into Ohio than to

have intel come in and make those chips here?

That's phenomenal. Absolutely.

And I'm with you on the manufacturing.

I think I've shared this with the two of you before, but I first generation College

student, paid my way through College by working in a paper mill in a factory and

saw what happened in my small hometown when the factories went away.

And yes, we're getting manufacturing back in a really big way.

Right. It's intel.

Exactly.

And it's clean.

And the good paying jobs, things, opportunities that folks are going

to have to do better and talk about stabilizing their family.

It's amazing.

Yes, I agree.

Thousands have left the workforce without a clear picture to return.

And what we mean here is that they truly did leave.

It wasn't just that they quit their job and looking for something else.

They are gone.

They're not even in the numbers coming back.

We were talking earlier off, Mike, and you

confirmed that nearly 2 million older adults have left the workforce, retired

earlier, or given up on finding a safe place to work.

They're just out moms are unable to secure affordable child care.

Young folks are having difficulty managing their school life with work life.

Employers can't find anybody to hire in their recruiting efforts, as we kind of

alluded to earlier, are not great right now.

So what can be done?

What programs, services or agencies are

available to employers that can lead to better or even more successful recruiting?

Right. That's a lot going on there.

Right? I know it's complex.

One of the things is, I think for

employers to really look at kind of back to that job posting again,

look at the jobs that you're trying to fill and determine.

Is this still valid?

Is this really a full time job?

Is this a part time job?

Is this a project?

Are there ways, then that maybe I can

engage with workers who have either by their own choice, left the workplace,

older workers or have found themselves kind of pushed out?

Are there things that I can bring them

back in again, whether it be project based or part time?

One of the things that keeps people out

often we find with older people is we still have that continued fear of being

back in a space where even though we seem to have covet, kind of contain, knock on

wood, people still have fear of contracting.

We also know that older adults are stepping into the crease to provide that

childcare solution for their adult children.

So some of the agencies I know the

employment for senior folks are still very involved in working on this.

Like I said, those businesses themselves,

though, I think they should be reaching out to organizations like that to say

who's available, really get finite in what you're looking for. Again, does this job

really take 27 different skills that you have to do, or can I find someone who's

maybe it's a very niche thing I need to have done, and is there someone out there,

maybe an employment for seniors or others that can fill that stage?

Well, and a shout out to nonprofits as

well, too, through this whole COVID process.

I think nonprofits are stronger than they were before.

They had to survive in even worse

situations and maybe a lot of for profit organizations.

So they really are there making it work

and have an incredible pool of people who are qualified to do these jobs.

One of the things and I didn't set this up in the question

for Kelly, and so I'm going to catch her off guard here a little bit.

One of the problems that I always had with employers is that

because they no longer actually read the resumes and send it through their

artificial intelligence programming, they're cutting people out.

Is that still an issue? Yes.

And I think that's where a lot of the bottleneck is.

I think we're starting to see everything old is new again.

Right. We're starting to see a return to more

in person type of connectivity using what we always said, use your network.

We're also getting businesses, I think, that are looking at that AI piece of it.

What are the keywords that are kicking

people out, whether they're there or whether they're not?

I also want to give a shout out to Josh Demadovich.

I don't know if you've met Josh.

He has a company, a platform called Improving Interviews.

And what he really is doing is working both with the businesses as well as the

job seeker to really rethink that whole process.

What are the words that you're putting on there?

Are you relying too heavily on AI?

How well are you training those people

that are actually the ones that are screening it?

What do they know what to look for?

How well are you identifying within your own organization where the bottleneck is?

Are you getting 500 applications and only getting five that get passed on?

What is that saying?

So he's a great Chamber member.

He's a board member.

I've been on panels with him before where we've talked about this very issue.

And he brings a lot of really good

information into how businesses can really reflect on their entire hiring process.

Because what's going on is people are just spinning their wheels

when the newscasters say, oh, everybody's dropping out nobody wants to work.

That really does not reflect what's going on.

Many have a particular reason where

they're not able to go back into the workforce, but many have just are in need

of a more stable position, definitely better pay.

It could be that home life balance, the work balance.

There are lots of things going on, but it seems that there are still a lot of people

applying for jobs and they're not getting anywhere.

And I'll tell you two other things around

that that I think businesses need to be aware of.

And I'm just hearing this too often, which is ghosting.

So that's a term that I hadn't heard about.

I kind of always you know, when I first learned about it, I thought it was like

when you were dating someone and they just stopped taking your calls.

But it is the same concept when it's an employee candidate relationship.

We'll have people that get two, three,

four interviews in with a company and then suddenly no communication.

So not only does that sour that

relationship with that person, but they're sharing this, and they're probably sharing

it on social media and other platforms to talk about their experience.

So we want to let employers know the

importance of communication, even if that person is not going to move forward.

I want to talk a minute, too, about that two, three, four interview process.

We've got folks who tell us that they've

applied for jobs and they've been six interviews in that's a lot of time.

And there are people that are already currently working.

So taking time away from their current role to go to six different interviews.

And that leads to a third thing, which is

employers need to shorten that period of time.

We have employers who might take 30, 60 days to get back to someone.

You're going to lose that person.

So that's another issue of, like, thinking about the timing.

And I've heard employers complain because

they get ghosted by applicants, but they have to realize there could be a really

good reason, and that is that applicant is now working.

You're going to call them during the day.

They are not going to be talking to you because they got a job someplace else.

Right. It's so competitive right now

for businesses to find that right talent and then keep them.

So, Kelly, a different view on recruiting challenges revolves around the need for

employment in the immigrant communities in central Ohio.

We've got a skilled, talented applicant

pool, but it seems like there's a lot of red tape that's going on.

Language barriers, educational issues, and certainly bias in the workplace.

Can you give us a little clearer pictures on these issues and what's going on?

How can we help the employers see the value in this group?

Yeah. So I'll share a quick statistic.

In the Columbus, MSA.

We have 1900 foreign born individuals. Think about that.

That's a large number.

And many of those individuals are between the ages of 16 and 34.

So we've got people within that age range

where we think about entering the workforce and moving up in the workforce.

Another statistic about that group here in the Columbus market.

And I think this holds true across the nation.

Close to 46% of those individuals hold at least a bachelor's degree from their

country of origin, have skill sets, certifications, credentials, job

experience, all sorts of things that they could bring to the workforce.

You mentioned something very critical language.

So there are lots of resources here in central Ohio where individuals can get

ESOL English for Speakers of Other Languages training.

Many of those are offered for free.

Places like my old stomping around

Eastland Fairfield Career Center has day and evening classes for individuals that

come in and want to learn English or better.

Their English or my English is already pretty good.

I want to practice for what I'm going to do next.

I think we also need to do a better job.

And this would take probably more movement

from our legislature to recognize credentials and give reciprocity.

We have people here that were practicing physicians and anesthesiologists and

others in their country of origin cannot do that.

They basically have to start over. Right.

So what can we do to grant some type of

recognition for their achievements so far and their ability to do the work?

We also have great partners in this space, Jewish Family Services.

And Columbus is the largest resettlement agency in the state of Ohio.

Contrary to the name Jewish Family

Services, they're not limited to people of the Jewish faith.

They're open to employers and job seekers of all walks of life.

Chris Community, Refugee and Immigration Services is a great partner.

I mentioned those two because the Chamber

was the lucky recipient of a grant from Columbia Gas of Ohio, NY source last year.

And the whole intent of that grant was to help the business community understand who

are the refugees and immigrants in central Ohio.

What skill sets do they bring?

What challenges have they faced?

How can you connect with them in a meaningful way?

So we offered three educational series.

As a result of that, we had an early

adopter AmerisourceBergen, and this was in the Dispatch most recently came to those

events and partnered with both Chris and Jewish Family Services.

And as of a conversation yesterday, has

within the last nine months hired 180 refugees.

Fabulous work.

These are good jobs and these are great workers.

We used to see that a lot of employment

for seniors where an individual would come in with PhDs

from major universities throughout the world and they would get to Columbus and

they're like they can't get a teaching job.

They can't get a job in a lab.

What do they do with a PhD in chemistry?

And that has always been a huge issue.

It really is wonderful. Yes.

I think if we could influence that in some

way that would be to all of our betterment.

And that kind of goes back to that notion

of the employer using something other than the AI in terms of their decision making

on applicants, so that somebody like an immigrant with particularly those with

higher degrees, can actually talk to somebody and that they can see the level

of understanding, skills and knowledge that the person has.

Definitely.

And we mentioned intel a little bit ago, and it's so easy to spotlight the large

corporations coming in because they make the splash, they make the news a lot more.

But small businesses are the backbone.

We know that people know that.

It's been said over and over again.

Minority and womenowned businesses,

though, struggle with funding, resources and discovery mentoring opportunities.

We've had previous episodes talking about

that actually has the Chamber delved into this arena.

Any advice that you can provide these

small business owners from a Chamber perspective, to get help?

Sure. Yeah.

And you're absolutely right.

Our Columbus Chamber has over 2100 members, 90% have 550 employees or fewer.

So, I mean, we are a Chamber of mostly smaller businesses.

We have the large, well known marquee names.

But our small businesses are the backbone.

Certainly, we recently hired the Chamber

recently hired our first officer for diversity, equity, inclusion and access.

We have a new VP.

Her name is Shari Sledge Thomas.

And she is helping our business community, particularly with a focus on that smaller

business community, figure out what are their goals for Dei and A.

How are they positioned right now to become, again, an employer of choice that

is a more diverse, inclusive and equitable workplace?

So we've created or she's created a portal on our Chamber website where an employer

can log in and go through a journey, an assessment journey.

What are you doing right now as far as hiring?

What are you doing right now as far as retention?

Where are you sourcing your talent and

kind of figure out where do you want to be, what do you want to do differently?

And then resources are available either as a self help or you can schedule a

consultation with her and she can sit down and do a much more intentional review.

Wonderful.

So I'm going to sort of piggyback on that,

because for the past 1011 years, my

view has been to help older workers.

And in terms of learning to become great

candidates, often I would hear clients tell me that they were asked

questions like, when did you graduate from high school?

Or don't you think you're overqualified for this job?

And I particularly like that.

Okay, Boomer.

Comment that has come about.

It would seem that older employees can learn just as much from younger

colleagues as the younger can learn from older colleagues, that it doesn't have to

be one or the other, that they can mix well and play well in the environment.

But how do we manage those three, four or

five generations of workers in the same room?

And more importantly, how do we recruit

and retain those individuals so that we have an age bias free environment.

Right. And you bring up such a critical point.

I mean, when we're asked to divulge things on our resume or during the

interview that indicate our age or how long we've been in the workforce, even

though many businesses are promote as not having ageism, there is still ageism.

We have to root that out. Right.

We have to be able to call that forward.

I think, again, going back to one of the

questions around engaging with older workers,

are there jobs within your organization that might be bringing in someone from the

outside, like from that employment for seniors or others to do a project based?

Now let's talk about having a multi generational workforce already on site.

I love the idea of using things like strength Finder where we're not

talking about peer groups of people just simply by age.

But

what are people strengths, regardless of what period of time they were born and

partnering people and making good teams that create a balance as opposed to and

I've had that said to me, too, about, okay, Boomer.

And I'm like, well, whatever.

Look at me over here on teams and Zoom and everything else rocking it.

So I think that if we think more about

what are the skills and strengths that everyone on the team brings and then build

those teams around that recognizing, though, that some people may not have

experience with I mean, I will admit transitioning to Zoom and Teams was a bit

of a challenge for me, but only for a short period of time.

And I did know who on my team to go to to ask for help.

And I also think celebrating the team sometimes is a really good way to approach

that, too, so that we all feel like we're contributing.

Right.

I'm glad we're seeing the momentum.

At one time, it was all the way to the

point of employers had to train themselves.

You're just out on your own.

But now I'm seeing and hearing local employers at least offering opportunities

just for the retention sake of saying, hey, we want to help you stay.

We want to help you stay.

Are there programs and services and

funding available to provide skills training to current employers that they

may not be aware of to help them with retention?

Yeah.

So I'm sure you guys have heard of TechCred Tech credit the funding pool

through the Governor's Office of Workforce Transformation.

They open up windows periodically for businesses to apply for approval.

And the window right now closes March 31 at 03:00 P.m..

But how this works is if you're looking

around at your incumbent workforce or even bringing on new workers and you say it's

mostly around technology type skills, but that's pretty broad.

It goes through construction, biology, manufacturing all the way across.

So if there's a skill set or certification

and you want to upskill that worker or bring on board a new worker and upskill

them, you can apply for funding to have that training

basically supplied by the state of Ohio by the Office of Workforce Transformation.

So that's always a good one.

The Workforce Development Board of Central

Ohio continues to have funding available for businesses to upscale.

I'm real excited about something that maybe you and your listeners have already

heard about, but it's the Columbus promise.

We're starting with this graduating class

of the students from Columbus City schools.

Their graduates this year will be able to

attend Columbus State Community College for free tuition.

That's fantastic.

I mean, removing some of those barriers to access for young people to go in and get

up to, I think it's six semesters of education paid for it.

And when you look at what Columbus State is doing from an equity standpoint, they

are providing food to students that they know are food insecure

just so much in that space and making sure that the whole person is taken care of.

So I love tech cred.

I think it's great.

Let's get more people through those.

And I think when I pulled up the latest from January, the numbers were Ohioans had

at that point in that January window, earned 4434 Tech focus credentials.

That's a lot of education happening to helping to upskill.

And I have to think that when intel and

others were looking at Ohio, I have to think that looking at what we do to invest

in people was probably part of the consideration.

One of the things that I always tell

clients to use, but employers should also be aware of we have resources such as the

Columbus Library has a contract with LinkedIn Learning.

And although that's much more informal, there isn't a formal credentialing system.

If you have

an employee with they may need just this little bit much more information.

That's all free through a Columbus Public Library card.

I can't get any simpler than that.

And there are tens of thousands of courses on that program.

And it used to be called Linda.com, and it

was purchased by LinkedIn, and it's now called LinkedIn Learning.

So there's just lots and lots of things like that that are out there that

employers can use to help skill their employees.

Absolutely. And what a great resource.

And aren't we fortunate that we have the

Columbus Metropolitan Library amazing access?

I think it's on the second floor at the

main branch and the whole business, and it's just incredible.

So lots and lots of resources.

But to your point, you can access a lot of

it from wherever you are in the moment remotely.

Right.

Kelly, we want to remind our audience that we are going to include all these details

and all these resources, one that we didn't talk about today, that I just want

to give a shout out to Ryan Blackburn from Ohio Veteran Services

Commission and all the work he does with employers who also help employers meet up

with great candidates who are veterans living in Ohio.

But are there other kinds of resources

that we haven't mentioned today that could be helpful to the local employers?

Oh, gosh, that's a really good question.

Those that we haven't mentioned yet today?

Well, I would say we talked about them a little bit, skirted down a little bit.

But the career and tech centers throughout this area have both

high school students and adult students that are getting job ready.

So if you are looking especially in the

skilled trades, but it's not limited to that.

I mean, we have a lot of career centers

that have adult and high school programming that offer BioMed and

construction management and architecture and graphic design.

So it's not your Grandpa's vocational school.

We have a lot of great resources in that space.

And I think, as mentioned, Chris and Jewish Family Services, we also have

an organization called Score Ohio can be a huge asset, a huge help.

I'm thinking through some others in my

Rolodex for employers or individuals who want to start their own company.

We have the Ohio Small Business Centers.

The development center. Yes.

Sbdc.

I think that's located over at the Columbus State Campus.

For others who are thinking again about becoming an entrepreneur, ECDI Economic

Community Development Institute, they are fantastic.

They do a lot of work, especially to help a minority and women owned businesses.

So there's a great focus there, too.

We're so lucky in central Ohio.

I think we just have not only great resources, but we have resources that want

to collaborate and want to help and want to see results.

Right. And, you know, I think that for both

employers and individuals who are job seeking, the biggest issue is, again, my

favorite thing is they don't know what they don't know.

And so they don't even realize that the resources are out there.

So I encourage employers to contact your local Chambers.

You're going to get information from those

entities that can help you in all of these issues.

And if they don't know, they're going to

know who can help you, who can get that information.

Absolutely. Yeah.

And thank you for mentioning that.

Certainly the Columbus Chamber is here to help.

Willing to help, want to help.

But Chambers all around the region have people on board on their staff that can be

incredible resources and navigators for you.

To your point?

I don't know what I don't know, but I need help.

So where do I start?

So that can be a great starting point as we start to wind down.

Any thoughts, any last words of wisdom as

we move toward a better economic situation?

Let's hope. Yeah.

No, that's a great question.

I was thinking about the last time I was

here, and we were just in really in the thick of it.

And one thing that has been on my mind a lot lately is the phrase getting back to

normal and I want to unpack that a bit because I think there were things that we

normalized before the pandemic that we probably need to stay in the past.

Right.

So what the world looks like now, what the workplace and workforce looks like now?

We have a lot of opportunity.

We uncovered some things that were maybe

barriers to people getting to work and now we can be more intentional about helping

to address those things like mental health and wellness in the workplace.

So back to normal, I'm trying to kick that

phrase to the curb a little bit and just say we need to get to next, right.

And the next, I think is going to be

better than what we were looking at before.

Right? Very good.

Thank you.

Kelly, thank you so much for joining us today.

It's always a pleasure, of course, to talk to you.

I learn so much every time again,

listeners, we're going to have all of these different, different ideas and

opportunities and agencies and organizations listed on our show notes.

Thank you for joining me.

Thank you both. Bye.