Web site spotlights employment needs

Some 30,800 people in Washoe County were looking for work at last count.

At the same time, employers in the region had posted nearly 2,200 jobs at online Web sites such as Monster and Careerbuilder.

One problem: The jobs that were open didn't match up well with the skills of unemployed workers.

Look, for instance, at construction.

During May, employers in northern Nevada posted exactly eight openings for construction workers, according to report generated by itsaboutjobs.com, a site operated by Nevadaworks that aggregates job postings from numerous sites.

But the Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation says that 25 percent of unemployment claims statewide during April came from out-of-work construction workers.

The high in-demand jobs, says itsaboutjob.com, include:

* Healthcare, with 526 northern Northern postings during May. Nearly 450 of those vacancies were in Washoe County.

* Retail trade, with 224 postings.

* Restaurants and food service, with 223 postings.

* Information technology, with 149 postings.

* Transportation and warehousing, with 105 openings.

Along with construction, low-demand occupations included legal (seven postings) and printing and publishing (one posting).

About 3,500 job-seekers have registered with itsaboutjobs.com, and 500 of them have posted resumes, says Jonathan Begley, a resource coordinator with Nevadaworks.

About 100 employers, meanwhile, have registered and use itsaboutjobs.com to search for candidates.

The site has been generating more than 1,200 hits a week since it was launched about 90 days ago.

Nevadaworks has been promoting the site with ads on Regional Transportation Commission buses, print and broadcast ads and Web sites.

One of the goals, Begley says, is to build the pool of white-collar and skilled workers who register to use the site.

"There are a lot of very skilled people out there," he says. "We want them to get their resumes on line."

Tom Fitzgerald, chief executive officer of Nevadaworks, says that the job-search software developed by Employon Inc. of Cleveland searches resumes for key words, then makes suggestions to employers and workers alike about possibilities they may not have considered otherwise.

A job-seeker seeking a CEO position, for instance, might be referred to an opening for a chief operating officer that requires similar skills.

The software also allows a tight focus on the types of jobs that employers are searching to fill on a county-by-county basis in northern Nevada.

Humboldt County employers, for instance, posted 15 openings for transportation and warehousing workers during May a demand far greater than any other county except Washoe.

Nevadaworks is investing about $300,000 in federal funds during the next two years in itsaboutjobs.com. Licensing the software accounts for about two-thirds of the cost.