Industry Visits & making new friends!

The Business Recruitment and Expansion Committee of Mississippi County which consists of:

 

Stacey Walker (ANC Solutions Group), Randy Brinkley (AEDC), Tamika Jenkins (Mississippi County Economic Development), and Ammi Tucker (South Mississippi Chamber of Commerce) 

The purpose of this committee is to reach out to industry and visit them to show them that we have resources available to help in all areas. Randy Brinkley is available on these visits to help with grant assistance at the state level. Tamika Jenkins helps with incentives and contacts at the county level. Stacey Walker is available on these visits to answer any training needs and be a representative for Arkansas Northeastern College & The Solutions Group. What we want to do is engage local business create a friendship and provide them with information that they may or may not know of.

Visits included plant tours or lunch with Plant Managers and Human Resource managers to check-up and make ourselves available to business and industry. In our visits we talk about General Information and needs of the companies, Employee county, major issues prohibiting productivity in the workplace, entry level skill requirements, average pay, new job openings or positions, and not limited to gaining feedback about the programs offered at Arkansas Northeastern College. 

In May we visited:

• Pre-Coat Metals
• Machine and Repair Services (MARS)
• Evonik 
• Skyline Steel 
• Regal (Regal Beloit)

We have made a set of new friends at each of these companies.  Each time we visit companies we find a common theme for the day. This visit's theme was more basic computer training! These companies were eager to share that in today's society the average person does not have the basic computer skills necessary to perform job functions. Well....The Solutions Group is one step ahead! TSG has already developed a basic computer course 8-10 hours long that cover most of the topics that these companies are looking for. 

Some Topics include: 

• Startup/Shut down of a pc
• File management (how to save a file & locate files) 
• Email (Sending/receiving attaching files)
• Basic Internet and Browsing Skills
• Basic Keyboarding Skills

 NOW! Just to market it to local industries! 

What else do we talk about? 

Well we generally have an hour visit. That doesn't leave much time to talk about everything that we have going on in Mississippi County. So our target focus right now is talk about about incentives, advisory committees, skills gaps, and the ACT Work Ready - National Career Readiness Certificate.

Blog by:
Stacey Walker
Coordinator, Industrial Training