November 2019 Business Connections

Page 1

November

2019

Business Connection

Volume 11, Issue 11

Kelso Longview Chamber of Commerce

Mortuary science can be an often overlooked career choice for students we learned on our tour through the crematory at Longview Memorial Park Funeral Home for our October Business After Hours event. See more photos on page 31.

Chamber CEO’s Message By Bill Marcum

Career Expo Brings Future Workforce, Business Together Kelso Longview Chamber of Commerce Team Bill Marcum, CEO Amy Hallock Project Manager Pam Fierst Office Manager Joelle Wilson Social Media Services

Kelso Longview Business Connection is published monthly by the Kelso Longview Chamber of Commerce 105 N. Minor Road • Kelso, WA 98626 • 360-423-8400 kelsolongviewchamber.org To advertise, call Bill Marcum, 360-423-8400 or email bmarcum@ kelsolongviewchamber.org Ad Deadline: 20th of each month

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he Cowlitz and Wahkiakum County Career Expo is Nov. 14 at the Cowlitz County Conference Center. What is it? And, what is the goal?

There are several reasons for a Career Expo, but the main reason is to educate our youth. By the end of a student’s eighth-grade year they are asked to start thinking about a career pathway choice. We asked ourselves, how could a student make such a big decision with so little knowledge of the options available to them, especially the options local businesses offer? Then we started thinking–if we could give students three consecutive years, eighth, ninth and 10th grade, to attend a countywide Career Expo, by the time they became juniors and seniors they should have a solid idea of what jobs or careers are available right here in our area. This idea got started last year when I had the chance to speak to graduating seniors at a local high school. I asked, how many students would be interested in a job at PeaceHealth, our county’s largest employer? To my amazement out of 125 kids, five raised their hand. Those five kids wanted to be doctors or nurses. I asked some of the kids sitting next to those five kids why they didn’t raise their hands? The response was as I expected, “Well, I don’t want to be a doctor or a nurse. I want to work on computers, be a technology

specialist or a security officer.” I told them of the 1,600 jobs at PeaceHealth about 700 are healthcare providers; the other 900 are jobs in technology and security. The security department, I said, probably has close to 20 people working in it. One young man asked kind of angrily, “How would we know that?” Launching a Solution It was a gut punch I knew needed to be addressed. The Chamber has the duty to help our businesses find qualified talent, but if the talent does not even know the jobs exist we have a serious problem. That is why the Chamber started the website cowltizbec. com to get businesses signed up to participate in the education process. Businesses have signed up to send speakers into classrooms, host tours of their facilities, provide job shadow opportunities for students, judge DECA competition and provide internships. That was the first step. The second step is to do more regional events like the Career Expo. We needed to streamline the number of career expos and job fairs happening in our area so those on the front lines could be more efficient with their time and reach a larger number of our local students. Jill Diehl, Longview schools, and Melissa Boudreau, Kelso schools, are part of the Chamber Education Foundation. They For more Career Expo, see page 3


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