How Does an Industry Actually Recruit Labor? The same guide on the hospitality industry from NOVA PIC described on the last page, provides an analysis of how that industry actually recruits labor in Santa Clara County. This is not the kind of information you would get from traditional data sources; you have to interview the employers themselves. Primary Recruiting Sources (for the hospitality industry in Santa Clara County, California) Schools that offer hospitality and food service degrees and certificates. Referrals from staff. Hotel Employee and Restaurant Employee International Union Jobs Corps CallJobs (the California employment service hot line) Newspaper advertising (which isn't very effective, but still used)

Once it identified likely industries, the WIB would then need to find the actual firms within its region. This could be done informally (using a phone book, for example, or by drawing on the expertise of job developers) or if the WIB wanted more detailed information on the firms, it could utilize one of the private data sources described in the previous section. Ask local unions too? Where are the good jobs? Who are unionized employers hiring? Who might they be willing to hire?

There are other things a WIB would want to know that it is not so easy to get from the kind of data described earlier. These include the following:

Also, the volatility of current labor markets means that traditional data sources—and even local surveys—can become dated extremely fast. Therefore WIBs need to rely on close relationships with employers to understand the ways in which the demand for labor and for particular skills are changing.

Insights into the answers to these questions can be gotten from the public data sources. For example, the OES provides some information on career paths and BLS publishes numbers of special bulletins that provide relatively detailed discussions about occupations and career ladders. Also the WIB can find materials that its state or other states have developed; chambers of commerce; other industry associations; or other WIBs. For specific industries, industry associations can be extremely rich sources of information.

But really useful answers to these questions in many cases also require unions as well as the WIB (or its contractor) to do some survey work or more intensive engagement of employers, such as focus groups. In some cases, a simple survey of targeted employers can be the first step (for example, to determine who has job openings and would be willing to hire TANF recipients). In other cases, it may be necessary to interview HR professionals to understand how career patterns work (or don't work) within and industry and which jobs provide real training.

So, as this example illustrates, the more complex the service delivery strategy, the more a WIB needs to know about both its customer groups: job seekers and employers. This information usually has to be current and local.