The Baton Rouge Area Chamber is working to bring skilled professionals to join the capital city’s workforce.
BRAC issued a call for résumés last week to attract talented out-of-state workers to Baton Rouge.
The résumé collection is part of the organization’s talent development program, which works to bring alumni from the University and other surrounding schools back to Baton Rouge, BRAC President CEO Adam Knapp said at a business seminar.
Knapp said the résumés will be compiled into a talent database so local companies can be matched with out-of-state working professionals.
Mike Odom, BRAC’s senior vice president of marketing, said the talent database is about a week into its launch and already contains a few hundred résumés. Thus far, social media has been the only form of advertisement, Odom said.
Currently, résumés in the database are only accepted from job-hunters outside of Louisiana because BRAC doesn’t want to “facilitate one company taking an employee from another company,” Odom said.
“As the economic development organization of the region, that doesn’t help the region,” Odom said. “That doesn’t mean they can’t do it individually, but we won’t help facilitate that.”
BRAC will act as a liaison between possible employees and hiring employers, since only BRAC has access to the résumés in the database, Odom said.
After exhausting the local employment pool, a Baton Rouge company looking to fill a specific position can contact BRAC to see if it has a relevant applicant. BRAC will then search the database, and if it finds a qualified worker, it will send the person’s information to the company.
Résumés will only be sent to employers with the applicant’s permission, Odom said.
He said the talent development program recognizes the need to attract new talent to Baton Rouge and to keep the professionals who are already in the area.
BRAC implemented the program after seeing a high demand for the service, Odom said.
Odom said BRAC receives at least one or two requests each week from people trying to move back to Baton Rouge to work. The talent database will serve as the formal offering of that service, he said.
Formalizing the résumé collection and matching process is a way for BRAC to ensure confidentiality and reliability of third-party résumés, Odom said.
Odom said the talent development program is made up of two aspects — attraction and retention. The first half of the year will be focused on attracting new workers through resources like the talent database, while the second half of the year will focus on keeping local higher education graduates in Baton Rouge.
“The feedback we’ve gotten since the launch [last] Tuesday has been overwhelming,” Odom said.
All résumés, with the exception of those from local employees, are currently being accepted.
 
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Contact Emily Herrington at [email protected]