Y'all Come Back Now, Y'hear? - Arkansas Business

Y'all Come Back Now, Y'hear? (Gwen Moritz Editor's Note)

by Gwen Moritz on Monday, Aug. 27, 2018

the one on Pages 20-21 of this issue

Brown tells me that there are probably 1,000 “primary” jobs aching to be filled in Jonesboro, and those would generate hundreds more service jobs. Recruiting a single new plant employing that many would be a massive economic development accomplishment, but it would also mean cannibalizing gainfully employed workers from existing businesses who are already poaching talent from each other.

noted on his Arkansas Economist blog

“Wal-Mart tries to recruit Ivy Leaguers who view Arkansas as a deal breaker.”

The executives I talked with in Jonesboro expressed some frustration that too few graduates of Arkansas State University stay in the area, but I think the desire to land someplace new and different — and generally bigger — is also a common phenomenon.

That doesn’t mean they have to be gone forever. HR professionals in Arkansas have long realized that the easiest recruits are those who already have a tie to the state — people like me, 19 years ago, when I was lured back home after a 10-year sojourn in Nashville, Tennessee. It doesn’t take a decade to realize that bigger isn’t necessarily better, especially if too much of one’s life is spent sitting in traffic.

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Arkansas Business

Monday, August 27, 2018