According to a recent report from U-haul, Las Vegas continues to attract the second largest group of folks relocating.  Last year we were ranked number 4.  This year number 2.  Yet, others have reported that Clark County is losing its population base as people flee the market due to the loss of jobs in Las Vegas.  The only thing we can say for certain is that there is uncertainty how we count newcomers.  Get the 2009 Top 50 U.S. Destinations report here. 

The Recruiting Nevada Network of employment websites is pleased to welcome our newest partner – Vegas.com.  Vegas.com is the leading travel website representing the Las Vegas marketplace.  Recruiting Nevada continues to grow its network.  Over the past 12 months, we have increased our monthly pages views from 400,000 to over 1.2 million, delivering our clients the most cost effective recruitment advertising solutions available.  Check out the new site:

Recruiting Nevada has never had an aversion to foreign nurses.  But we never could assemble a business case to support it.  So, we  never incorporated a foreign nurse recruitment strategy into our overall plan.  Several reasons warranted this:

• We have no experience in foreign recruitment
• We are not a staffing agency, and this model falls more in line with agency work
• We know we can effectively market Las Vegas as a relocation destination to American nurses and achieve great success
• We are uncertain what problems the language barriers  create in the overall delivery of care
• Our preliminary talks with clients showed an 18 month average conversion with a 50-75% fall-out from time of interest to time of employment.

So, we stuck to our core competency….marketing Las Vegas and Nevada as the greatest place to live, work and nurse.  Our solution provides over leads annually of health care professionals who opted-in and expressed an interest in wanting to relocate to Nevada. 

Come to find out, the biggest problem has been the language barriers.  LasVegasSun.com, a sister website of recruitingnevada.com, recently published an article going into the details of the issue.  It can be read here - “Foreign nurses can slip into communications gap.”

Las Vegas (NV) – The data presented in this press release were collected by Recruiting Nevada (“RN”) during the 4th quarter of 2008 from job seekers who visited the www.recruitingnevada.com website. Recruiting Nevada publishes Nevada’s largest network of employment Web sites, thus attracting the largest audience of local and relocating job seekers. Restrepo Consulting Group LLC (“RCG”) analyzed the trends that the data reflect.

The two firms work together to analyze and report on employment trends in Southern Nevada. The work that RN performs is critical to understanding the types of jobs being marketed, the job seekers that are interested in those jobs and our community, what job skills they might be bringing and where they are coming from. RCG’s role is to assess and interpret what the data means for the future economic sustainability of Southern Nevada.

A total of 2,729 responses were collected by RN during the period. The data contained herein represent self-reported information. Job seekers’ intentions might vary significantly from their actual behavior. The data being analyzed are based on responses to job openings that have been marketed by RN for its clients, not basic inquiries.

Top 10 States: Where Job Seekers Are From: 1,832 of 2,729 Respondents

Analysis

• There were 2,729 survey job seekers during the 4th quarter of 2008 vs 2,857 during Q3. 67% or 1,832 of Q4 respondents came from 10 states. Nevada (28.5%), California (11.2 %) and Texas (4.5 %) were the Top 3 states for survey job seekers during the quarter. In Q3, the Top 3 states were Nevada, California and Florida. Florida, which was #3 in Q3, dropped to the #5 spot in Q4. In Q3, Nevada respondents represented 26.3% of all respondents, whereas 13.7% of respondents came from California and 5.4% from Florida.
• Over 72% of all the respondents from the Top 10 states were from Southwestern states (Nevada, California, Texas and Arizona), compared to slightly over 70% last quarter. Three of these states, Nevada, California and Arizona, remain at the center of the housing market collapse. Of particular concern is Nevada, because the data is indicative of the weak job market. Nevada reached an unemployment rate of 9.1% in December 2008, almost a full percentage point above the national average of 7.2% in December 2008.

Top 5 Employment Categories of Interest to Job Seekers

Analysis

• The Top 5 employment categories most heavily marketed, and the ones that job seekers were most interested in included:
  1. Nursing – 32% vs. 41% in Q3
  2. Construction Management – 22% vs. 18% in Q3
  3. Mining Trade – 24% vs. 18% in Q3
  4. Construction Trades – 14% vs. 13% in Q3 and
  5. Instruction – 8% vs. 10% in Q3
• Again, the good news is that the largest segment of job seekers was looking for nursing jobs, a profession that is in very short supply in Nevada. The bad news is that 46% of the job seekers were from the Construction sector, a jump of 48% from Q3’s estimate. This a very clear indicator of the massive job losses experienced by this sector nationally. That construction workers are seeking jobs in Nevada shows how bad things are elsewhere, considering the state of our own real estate market!
• Please note that RN is able to define the audience of readers/users by its Search Engine Marketing (SEM). So, the data on employment categories skew towards nursing, because that is where the largest portion of RN’s marketing budget is invested. No dollars, however, were spent marketing construction-related jobs. These are “active” jobseekers who found the www.recruitingnevada.com website.

Job Seeker Education Levels

Analysis

• The data appear to indicate that there was a relatively good supply of well-educated job seekers looking for work in Nevada during Q4, 2008. Added together, job seekers with Bachelors, Master and PhD. degrees comprised 29.4% (vs. 35% in Q3) of the persons looking for new employment, in-state and out-of-state. What we don’t know is how many are currently employed, underemployed or unemployed.
• Almost 28 (vs. 23% in Q3) of respondents had a high school diploma. About 16% had an Associate’s degree and 9.4% had a trade school diploma

Job Seeker Experience

Analysis

• Senior level and senior management employees, again, represented the largest share of job seekers at 43.2%. This was the same portion as in Q3. Mid level employees and mid level management accounted for 18.4%, the second largest group. In Q3, mid level respondents accounted for 19.6% of job seekers.
• On a positive note, its good for Nevada that mid and senior level employees are interested in possibly relocating to the state. On the down side, the relatively large percentage of senior and mid level job seekers is the result of the continued shedding of jobs around the country, because of a recession that is becoming more severe with each passing month.

When Will Job Seekers Move?

Analysis

• When asked about their interest level, 54% (53% – Q3) of all the job seekers in Q4 said that they would move to Nevada if they could find a job here. Clearly, most respondents do not want to move to Nevada without a job already in hand, because of the severity of the economy in the state.
• Nearly 23% of job seekers indicated that they currently live in Nevada. The share in Q3 was 22%.

Job Seekers & Their Housing Needs

Analysis

• The majority of respondents in the Q4 survey, not currently living in Nevada (49%, vs. 45% in Q3), indicated that they would prefer to rent if they move to Nevada, at least initially. Additionally, 39% (Q3  – 43%) said that they would rent first and then buy a home once they move to Nevada. Only 12% claimed that they would like to buy a house upon relocating to the state. This was consistent with Q3’s numbers.
• The weak economy is clearly causing job seekers to be very conservative in making long-term and large-scale financial commitments like home purchases. This also continues to be function of the health of the housing markets in Nevada and in the job seekers’ state of origin.
• Out of those job seekers who expressed an interest in buying a house once they move to Nevada, 52% (51% in Q3) were senior level or senior management employees with over 4 years of experience.

Job Seekers Education Level & Willingness To Buy a Home In Nevada

Analysis

• The data show that, regardless of the education level, more than half of all job seekers plan to ultimately buy a home (51% – blue and yellow bars).
• Of the respondents who stated that they intended to buy a home in Nevada, over 29% (Q3 – 26%) had a bachelor’s degree. Of those who plan to rent, almost 31% (Q3 – 24%) had a high school diploma.

How can government get in the way of recruiting? 

When they are responsible for licensure.  And the licensure process takes longer than it should.

This is particularly the case with medical professionals who need Nevada licensure before they can practice.  Annette Wells of the Las Vegas Review Journal did a nice job uncovering the issue in an article titled: Nevada’s tough laws weed out good physicians with bad.

Many times a physician loses patience (or would that be patients:)) waiting for the process.  Other times, the opportunity to relocate passes. 

Let me share a personal experience:

One of my best friends (and a fraternity brother) from college is a podiatrist.  He has a successful practice with multiple offices in Pennsylvania.  His skills as a diabetic wound care specialist are in high demand in Las Vegas with our aging population. 

I have been sharing my incredible experience of living in Las Vegas with him for over 15 years.  He has visited on many occasions and has talked about how great it would be to start a successful practice in Las Vegas.

Well, over the last year he became more serious about this desire and took the necessary exam to start the process.  He also scouted out office space, met with several hospitals to start the process of getting privileges to practice in their facilities and even had his wife out to begin looking at housing.

His goal was to open up a practice in the early Spring and relocate his family to Las Vegas after the kids got out of school for the Summer.  The short story is – it took several more months to get his license than he expected.  When he did get his Nevada license, it was the middle of Summer and the opportunity to move had passed.

Now with his children back in school and the crashing economy, we more than likely will not get him to consider relocating for a few more years.  This is a loss to the entire Nevada community.

I imagine there are many similar situations like this.

With Nevada having one of the worst physician (and nurse) to population ratios in the country, you would think that we would give a higher priority to the licensure process.  Unfortunately,  with our Governor’s lack of commitment to health care, I imagine the situation will only get worse.

As you probably know, Recruiting Nevada is involved in the Opportunity Boulevard Career Fair.  We host four events per year and have been working at differentiating ourselves from the other Job Fairs in Las Vegas. 

We already outperform all of the others in attracting high-level professionals to our events, but we want to continue reaching ‘rich’ demographics.  One of our partners, Las Vegas Publications, has consistently attended the career fair and handed out the official Las Vegas Relocation Guide. 

We are now able to advertise our events a year in advance due to the fact that we have calendared them that far in advance.  This will assist us in attracting more professionals to plan a trip to Las Vegas and meet and interview with employers all in one day. 

We have also begin working with other partners such as Vegas.com and LasVegas.com on discounted travel packages. 

The easier we can make this for the professional looking to relocate to Nevada, the more success we will have.

BIG.  Very BIG. 145,000 ‘new jobs’ BIG. 

For those of you not able to attend the Recruiting Roadshow last week at Green Valley Ranch, I delivered a presentation on the recruiting landscape in Las Vegas.  It was very numbers and statistics driven.  If you are interested in viewing the PowerPoint presentation, you can access it here.

If you are interested in a personal presentation, contact me. 

Nevada is expected to see 5 percent job growth by the end of this decade, according to recent projections by the Nevada Department of Employment, Training & Rehabilitation (DETR), said Bill Anderson, DETR’s chief economist.

“There is reason to be optimistic about Nevada’s long-term economic outlook,” Anderson said. “While the news of late has not been encouraging, a developing megaresort boom, coupled with a likely improvement in the housing sector is the reason for this positive forecast.”

DETR’s Research and Analysis Bureau conducted an analysis of employment by industry through 2010. It is estimated that Nevada’s economy was home to 1.29 million jobs in the final quarter of 2007, Anderson said.

“For all of 2007, this translates into a 1.4 percent increase relative to 2006, and represents a marked slowdown from previous years,” Anderson said. “Job gains in 2006 totaled 4.7 percent, and 6.3 percent in 2005. In fact, job growth in 2007 was surely the slowest since 0.2 percent in 2002.”

The projections process uses actual employment data provided by Nevada employers to determine employment trends. The historical data is supplemented by the knowledge of upcoming developments around the State and Bureau staff analyses of likely economic scenarios. Projections are based upon actual information through June 2007. Therefore, any references to employment for periods beyond the second quarter of 2007 should be considered estimates.

Improvement is expected to get under way in earnest during 2009, when a 3.2 percent gain is anticipated, Anderson said. In 2010, growth will strengthen even further, peaking at 5.1 percent in the year’s third quarter. Jobs are forecast to total 1.44 million by the end of 2010. Relative to estimates from year-end 2007, this represents a gain of 145,000 new jobs, he added.

An overview of the forecast for various industry groups is shown below:

“The recent housing boom and crash has greatly impacted recent trends, and will continue to impact the State’s labor markets in the near-term,” Anderson said. “The strong employment gains in recent years were fueled by unprecedented global liquidity.  The correction phase of the business cycle developed in mid-2006. Home sales and the median price of homes continue to plummet statewide. Sub-prime lending issues have led to problems in the broader credit markets. Now, and in the future, we must experience the aftereffects, and our current and future growth rates reflect that reality.”

For instance, the projections suggest that construction jobs were declining at a 7 percent rate as 2007 came to a close, Anderson said. This decline was driven by weakness on the residential side of the market. Construction job losses are forecast through mid-2009, with improvement thereafter. By the end of 2010, jobs should be growing at a 5% annual clip and are expected to total about 135,000, up slightly from current readings.

Megaresort construction is underway up and down the Las Vegas Strip. Nevada should see a resultant surge in employment in 2009, Anderson said. Encore at Wynn Las Vegas opens in late-2008. Fontainebleau and Project City Center will open in 2009. These three projects alone total over 12,000 new rooms. If other resorts aren’t negatively affected, Nevada will see a surge in employment to service this growing sector. The next several months are forecast to be relatively stable, but by year-end 2009, leisure and hospitality jobs should be growing at a 7.5% clip. Similar gains are forecast throughout 2010. By the end of the forecast period, leisure and hospitality jobs should surpass 400,000 in the State.

“The western part of the state, Washoe and nearby counties, will likely need longer to emerge from the economic downturn,” Anderson said. “There is no apparent economic driver on the horizon to fill the shoes of the liquidity-induced housing boom, and gaming is not an expanding industry in the area. Western Nevada will most likely wait for the business cycle to reverse. An improvement in California’s economic performance would also be a positive for the region. Exports are gaining momentum from overseas as the value of the dollar drops. This could help support the manufacturing sector, which has a significant presence in western Nevada. However, housing related manufacturing is a significant drag on the sector.”

Anderson added that gold producers in the rural counties are expected to continue to operate at maximum capacity. Employment in the industry is forecast to continue growing, but may be held back by the inability to recruit and hire qualified workers.  Copper prices have also been resilient, as demand from China remains strong. Mining has rural Nevada on solid economic ground into the predictable future. Support sectors, however, appear slow to respond. Business leaders in rural Nevada inform us that specialty contractors are currently in demand.

“Following a period of relative stability over the next several months, Nevada’s economy appears poised for a rebound beginning in 2009,” Anderson said. “Perhaps the most important risks to the outlook concern events beyond the State’s borders. If the national economy weakens further and slips into recession, Nevada will feel the impacts, in part via fewer-than-anticipated visitors and lower discretionary incomes. Continued credit market volatility could prolong the problems in the residential housing sector, and perhaps even spill over into the nonresidential side, delaying our recovery in Nevada.”

LAS VEGAS – It’s often taken for granted how it is that Nevada, the country’s fastest growing state, continues to attract skilled professionals needed to serve the community.

But it’s no accident. Rather, it’s thanks to the work and dedication of companies such as Las Vegas-based Recruiting Nevada – companies that have made it their mission to recruit to Nevada regardless of economic circumstances.

Recruiting Nevada has been diligently working on the frontline to strengthen Nevada’s economy through socially responsible recruiting since 1993. And leading the efforts is founder and president, Doug Geinzer.

Through Recruiting Nevada, which attracts jobseekers in career fields across the board to Nevada job postings on www.RecruitingNevada.com, Geinzer has been working to fill open Nevada jobs with quality professionals since the company’s inception. But although his mission to serve Nevada has been steadfast, his avenues of accomplishing this have seen much evolution.

“There’s a reason we’ve been able to survive and thrive for 15 years,” Geinzer said. “Other than our mission, ‘change’ has been our only constant. We’re not the same company we were five years ago, and we certainly aren’t the same company we began as. The only way to succeed is to respond to the market.”

And change, Recruiting Nevada has.

The company began as the publisher of Las Vegas’ first employment-specific newspaper, Las Vegas Employment News and has since done everything from publishing a Las Vegas Job Guide, a job/relocation package sold to college students looking to pursue a career in the hospitality industry; to hosting Las Vegas Career Fairs, an industry-specific career fair group that assisted in the development of thriving industries and assisted employers in finding qualified employee candidates; to publishing Diversity2000, the first diversity recruiting magazine distributed to every college campus across the country; to creating Diversified Recruitment Advertising, Southern Nevada’s only locally owned and operated, full-service advertising agency specializing in recruitment or help-wanted advertising of its time.

A leader in the industry since the beginning, Recruiting Nevada continues to reinvent itself. And along the way, the company has not only become a Las Vegas success story, but it has done so by helping others do the same.

Today the company publishes the state’s largest Nevada-specific employment Web site, RecruitingNevada.com, which, in April, was selected for inclusion in the prestigious “WEDDLE’s 2007-2008 Guide to Employment Sites on the Internet.” But although the company has found its home as an Internet-based business, it certainly hasn’t stopped changing.

In late 2006, Geinzer launched a Nevada-focused blog to serve as a “one-stop shop” resource for recruiters focusing on the Nevada marketplace and found almost immediate success. Monitoring more than 50 sources of information himself, Geinzer’s blog includes facts and insight in a variety of categories, including out-of-market recruiting, online recruiting and diversity; information on all upcoming job fairs, training seminars and upcoming awards; calendars; links to other blogs, and more.

Also in 2006, Recruiting Nevada launched and became a partner with the Home News Community Newspapers in hosting regular Opportunity Boulevard Career Fairs, which focus on attracting out-of-state jobseekers and older workers to Nevada jobs. Made up of several local businesses, including AARP-Las Vegas and Nevada Broadcasters Association, the group hosted five career fairs in 2007, which, combined, attracted more than 14,200 jobseekers – over 2,915 of which came to Nevada from out-of-state to attract professionals to Nevada jobs. The next Opportunity Boulevard Career Fair will take place Feb. 21.

Geinzer also serves as chairman of the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce’s We Care Committee, which works to support teachers as well as their family members, as they move to Nevada through programs such as the Trailing Spouse program. The program was developed to work with Southern Nevada’s business leaders to help family members of much-needed teachers find employment. The Trailing Spouse program encourages employers to give special attention to resumés submitted by family members of new Clark County School District teachers relocating to Southern Nevada.

Recruiting Nevada not only developed the Trailing Spouse Program for the We Care program and the Clark County School District, but is now implementing this program with many of the area hospitals. The Trailing Spouse Program distributes family members’ resumés to hundreds of top employers in Southern Nevada, who also have access to a searchable database of those resumés.

Geinzer has also served as the chairperson of the recruitment task force of the Southern Nevada Medical Industry Coalition for the past four years.  This task force is composed of human resource directors and recruiters from all area hospitals and medical facilities.  The group travels outside of Nevada to markets such as California and Chicago to recruit nurses to relocate to Nevada.

In addition to the company’s strategic partnerships, Geinzer has also continued to improve the efficiency of the already-successful online job boards. After condensing the company’s 10 previously separate industry-specific employment Web sites into one, www.RecruitingNevada.com, Geinzer then honed the site to include a candidate matching feature, which allows Recruiting Nevada to deliver its clients candidates matched with the precision of a headhunter while maintaining the pricing of a “help wanted” ad.  

Most recently, Recruiting Nevada partnered with California-based Vcruit to offer video recruitment ads to help their client businesses further introduce their company and its culture to potential employees. Through Vcruit (vcruit.com), businesses can upload professional quality videos about their companies to enhance their profile. Video will also be incorporated into Recruiting Nevada’s new relocation page as well to provide jobseekers with information on the quality of life Nevada offers.

“We’re always looking for new ways to attract not just more, but the best, people to Nevada,” Geinzer said. “Our affiliation with Vcruit allows us to showcase the best of what Nevada has to offer to jobseekers – both at work and throughout the community.”

And a partnership with Internet-based Arbita – the world’s largest global multi-posting system for job boards as well as the largest online recruitment advertising agency – is also in the works. The partnership would allow Recruiting Nevada’s reach, and thus, the reach of its clients, to go global.

Through the partnership, Recruiting Nevada will act as the Nevada representative of Arbita’s services. Once a client purchases an ad through Recruiting Nevada, they can then select any additional job boards, such as Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com, they would like to advertise on – selecting by country, state, city or industry.

So what does 2008 hold for Geinzer and Recruiting Nevada? As of yet, only Geinzer knows. But something involving “change” might be a good guess.

Are you a major employer in Southern Nevada?  Has the housing issue impacted your ability to attract and retain qualified employees?  The Southern Nevada Regional Planning Coalition has commissioned Restrepo Consulting Group to perform a study pertaining to sustainable workforce and housing availability programs in southern Nevada. In order to gather data that will be of the utmost utility to local and regional planners, RCG through its sub-consultant, Strategic Solutions, is administering a confidential survey to gather information about workforce housing needs.

If you are an employer with more than 400 employees and have not been contacted to participate in this survey, and wish to participate, please contact Jason Gray at (702) 853-1332.