Happy New Year!
I want to provide you some insight we’ve been collecting on the gap between job openings in our community and local talent. This is a joint project of the SnoValley Chamber of Commerce, the SnoValley Innovation Center, and Umpqua Bank for the benefit of the City of Snoqualmie (where this idea started at the EDC), and the City of North Bend.
The website, SnovalleyJobs.com, was launched in June 2021. These are some of the key findings to date:
25,000+ page views
6,000+ job seeker visitors (accumulation of monthly unique visitors, same visitor per month counts as a single visitor regardless of the number of site visits per the software analytics)
The City of North Bend, as an example, had 664 page views.
We have had 100 Job Seekers volunteer information that gives us the following insights:
The SnoValley Job Board has been an excellent tool in allowing us to better connect with job seekers right here in our own community.
Samantha Pedersen
HR-New Hires
Snoqualmie Valley School District
I really appreciated the new SnoValley Jobs board and recently hired a new manager position for my screen printing shop using it. Some of the larger and more commonly known platforms apply too large a filter and we weren't finding the local candidates we'd envisioned. But, within a week of posting on this job board, we found exactly what we were looking for!
Michael Hughes
Managing Member
Dark Horse Printing, LLC
Preston, WA
Edison365 just made a great hire through SnoValleyJobs.com! There are so many experienced high tech trained and skilled workers in the Valley. SnoValleyJobs.com is a good way to keep it local. Having work and home close together creates value for both parties.
Tad Haas
Executive Vice President
edison 365
Additionally,
Their top interests are (some are referenced in the flyer), multiple answers allowed
Employers are required to answer questions in order to post a job, we had 135 responses
The jobs that have been posted
Preliminary Knowledge:
According to the 2010 US Census data, we have approximately 6000 jobs between the two cities.
Nearly 4000 employees commute from outside our employment circle
Other Key Learnings of SnoValley Innovation Center’s SnovalleyJobs.com website:
Those posting salary ranges are getting more click throughs (using a job application link if the employer provides one or visiting the company’s website to learn more about the business or job)
Wage transparency provides job seeker and employers greater insight. When a salary range is provided there are more visits to those job postings.
We are learning more insightful, measurable information that assists businesses in hiring more local employees. We believe there are other opportunities we can assist local government in policy making, economic development and in continuously adding value to a very business-friendly community thanks to our unique partnership with the SnoValley Chamber of Commerce, Pacific Lutheran University, and the cities of North Bend and Snoqualmie.
This project has been self-funded and managed for the benefit of our communities. At this point, we have minimized the burden to the City of Snoqualmie, the City of North Bend, and the SnoValley Chamber of Commerce. It is a demonstration project as I believe through the Innovation Center and Chamber we can achieve better results than the contracted studies Snoqualmie’s Retail Leakage Report (2017) and North Bend’s Land Usage Policy (2018); those efforts together had a cost of $50,000 to a Seattle-based consulting firm with far fewer participants involved.
Please reach out to us with any questions by using our contact us page.
Best regards,
Rob Wotton
Director of Strategic Partnerships
SnoValley Innovation Center