Officials from both the Knox County Area Partnership for Economic Development and Galesburg Area Chamber of Commerce say that many local businesses struggle to recruit out of town talent for specialized positions.KCAP President Ken Springer explains these are jobs like CFOs and doctors, that there wouldn’t necessarily be a large pool of applicants for locally.
That’s why the two organizations have been working for on “A Guide to Greater Galesburg”, which presents a narrative to prospective transplants on what it’s like to live here.
Linder says this guide has been about a year in the making and was born out a bi-annual meeting of human resource professionals.
“They gave us feedback on what candidates ask them a lot or what new candidates that they bring to the area have struggled to find or struggled to do while getting settled,” Linder says.
But she says since it launched last Friday, Chamber members are already “eating it up” and finding it useful.
The guide is open source so that it can be used to augment recruiting tools that companies may already have in place.
Springer says that Knox County has been losing population for decades and anything that can be done to grow the population, should be done.
Locally, Springer says KCAP has launched a lot of programming to retain local employees in key industries.
