Recruiting and training is already underway!

Courtesy of the princerupert.com portal we discovered an article from the Raven’s Eye newspaper by Rudy Kelly. It’s a fairly well researched look into the local container development from the viewpoint of the First Nations of the area. It takes a look at the controversy of January’s legal bid and goes further along in looking at the impact of the project on the local economy.

What caught the eye of the Podunkian is a quote from Lorne Keller, the vice-president of marketing and development for the Prince Rupert Port Authority, a quote made while examining the bigger issue of job development linked to the port expansion.

The interesting revelation revolves around the start up of the project this month and what may follow in quick order: “Project construction begins in March and will be "full blown" in April, said Keller, with the project expected to be up and running by the third quarter of 2007. As a result, he said, recruiting and training is already underway.”

We are curious as to which jobs have been recruited for and when and where the training has taken place. We’ve seen nary an ad in the local papers (with the exception of Friday’s Port Corporation managerial job explosion), nor has there been any posting of jobs on the local job banks found at the Employment centre or on the internet.

We hope this isn’t another example of the ever popular old boy’s (and girls we guess) network of job creation, where friends of a friend get the heads up and the inside track, while everyone else wanders around oblivious to any potential job openings. It would be of interest to learn how those jobs were filled and what the process for filling them was.

Needless to say, in a town starved for jobs as this one is, a fair and transparent job procurement process should be in place for any jobs made available from the port expansion. One would think that a smart employer would want to avail themselves of a wide pool of talent in town and not just some buddy of a buddy of a buddy. With the promise of employment to come, there are many who have stayed around hoping to find opportunity in the supposedly coming boom. Making sure that the hiring lines are above board and fair would be a solid step for any employer.
If that does not happen then there will be some seriously cynical job seekers wandering the streets of Podunk in the near future.