LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — The Little Rock Regional Chamber is expanding its reach with hopes of bringing more people to the Natural State and filling hundreds of jobs.
Since the "Little Rock Love Connection" campaign launched in the late spring, the chamber has been seeing success.
"We've had, obviously more people that have come on board, a lot of people that heard about it through different various media outlets and wanted to call us and get engaged and involved," Jay Chesshir with the Little Rock Regional Chamber said.
Chesshir said the Little Rock Love Connection campaign has been seeing success since it launched in May. They've received close to 700 resumes and have filled about 65 jobs.
"From the perspective of our marketing, it's worked really, really well with over 75% of those applications, those resumes, being people with post-secondary degrees," he added.
The goal of the campaign is to bring people back to Little Rock with connections to the city and even new faces.
So far, they've received applications from people in 36 states and nine countries.
"We're still getting resumes on a weekly basis now that the marketing has really become more of what we're doing from a social media standpoint," he explained.
The chamber said partner companies are offering a $5,000 sign-on bonus to those who choose to work with them and one year later, if that person is still working for that company, the chamber will pay them an additional $5,000 to retain them.
Southwest Power Pool is one of the businesses that is participating.
"With our budget and being here this month, we're going to be posting a lot of positions, and having that candidate pool to go to is an amazing resource, because as you know, here in Little Rock, our unemployment rates are right around 3%. So we have to find talent elsewhere, and bring it into the state," Stephanie Hackney with Southwest Power Pool said.
Hackney also said she's hired a few people through the campaign and is excited to fill even more open positions.
"Being able to partner with the chamber and then offering an additional $5,000, after a year, that's just going to help us grow and continue to staff, the company in the best way possible. So we're very happy to be partnering with them," she added.
The chamber president said the goal is to get between 700 and 750 applications and they'll reevaluate at the end of the year to see if they want to adjust the campaign for 2024.