Find the people

When Alta Resources opened a call center operation in Fort Myers a year ago, executives worried they'd have trouble finding enough qualified employees to fill 400 jobs.

The Fort Myers area was a labor market terra incognita for the Wisconsin-based company. A grand total of four people had moved to Fort Myers from the privately held company's headquarters in Neenah, Wisc., to launch the operation, including Managing Director Paul Makurat.
“
Nobody knows us down here and I needed to hire 400 people,” Makurat recalls fretting.

But Makurat shouldn't have been worried. Over two days in August last year, 740 people showed up for a job fair and hundreds of others applied online. Many people braved heavy downpours during one of those days to apply in person. “It was a really great turnout,” Makurat says.