“NO PLACE LIKE HOME”

In North Central Illinois!

If you left home because you thought there wasn’t a good job for you in the area, or because you thought there wasn’t anything “fun” to do, click here to READ MORE!

Current Job Postings & Other Potential Opportunities

 Press Release

November 16, 2009

“No Place Like Home” Touts Local Area

 As Dorothy reminded us as she wished her way back to Kansas, there really is “No Place Like Home”.  And the local campaign of the same name, which is designed to bring back the young people who choose to leave the north central Illinois area to go to school, to join the military, to look for a job, or just simply to try out life in the bigger cities, has had over 3,000 opportunities to remind webpage visitors of that very thing in just a little over a year.

 “Although we didn’t really set any numeric goals for ourselves in terms of visits to the webpage, we were all pretty excited when we reached the 3,000-hit mark”, said Pam Furlan, Executive Director for BEST, Inc. and staff to the North Central Illinois Works (NCI Works) local workforce board, whose website houses the “No Place Like Home” webpage. 

 Studies of the NCI Works four-county area that covers Bureau, LaSalle, Lee and Putnam Counties indicated that many young people were leaving the area for a number of different reasons, with many not coming back until many years later – if at all.  That trend, often referred to as “brain drain” or “youth flight”, left area businesses short of local talent to fill their higher skilled, higher paying jobs. 

 Lonnie Doan, NCI Works’ Chairperson stated “Our job as the local workforce board is to address challenges like this that face our local business community every day, and find solutions that will meet their needs.  If they need young talent to fill their high-skilled, high-paying jobs, we need to make sure our young people at least know those good jobs exist in our area.”  As Doan explained, the idea behind “No Place Like Home” is to have employers post their higher skilled jobs paying at least $15/hour, or a salaried equivalent, on the NCI Works’ website, whether those jobs are open or not at the time of the posting.  “We just want to let everyone know that there are some very good jobs in our own backyards, and some very good companies looking to keep or bring back young, talented individuals to fill them”, he continued. 

 Furlan invited employers who would like to post their jobs on the “No Place Like Home” webpage to contact her office at (815) 224-7930.  She also urged young people, as well as their families and friends, to check out the “No Place Like Home” webpage on www.nciworks.org to see if there might be that perfect job just waiting for them to come back home, kind of like mom and dad are doing.

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