The community responds to our “Occupy A Job” sign
Since putting up a yard sign which says – Occupy A Job, We’re Hiring! – we have received a significant community response to it. We’re very pleased to say that most people accepted the sign in the spirit that we intended it – that we’re growing and we have several positions available for qualified people.
Although admittedly the sign is a play on the “Occupy” movement which is spreading around the country, we didn’t intend for this sign to be interpreted as an anti-Occupy Wall Street message. In fact, we agree with some of the issues that the OWS groups have. We just happen to believe that rather than Occupy public land in protest, the best thing we can do as a small business is to work at growing our business and create new jobs.
Kevin Leininger of the Fort Wayne News Sentinel newspaper was the first to pick up on the sign. He interviewed Steve Deam Sr. and Steve Deam Jr. and wrote
As you can tell by some of the comments on the article, some people take exception to the message on the sign. I’m not sure how a message that we have jobs available is a bad thing, but apparently to some people it is…
The following day WANE TV contacted us for an on-camera interview and aired [this piece] on the sign.
Exactly one week later Indiana News Center requested an interview and aired [this piece] as a follow-up to the story.
As a result of the unexpected media exposure, we were flooded with résumés and applications.
Reaction to the sign was overwhelmingly positive. We received numerous emails from people, as well as had people stop in, who wanted to let us know they loved the sign. We even received emails from people in Arizona and Utah who said they saw the story on their local news.
We also received positive reaction from many of our own employees, and in fact, it was a couple of our employees that suggested we add tents to draw more attention to the sign. Our office staff told me that out of the well over 100 applicants, not one person had anything negative to say about the sign. We even had at least one person from the “Occupy Fort Wayne” movement stop in to apply!
CNC Industries would like to thank all of those people who have applied for a position. Due to the strong response, we expect to be able to quickly fill the 5-7 positions currently available and will draw upon these applicants for future positions as they become available. We are in the process of reviewing each and every application, and will be contacting people very soon for an interview.
We wish we had jobs available for every applicant who truly wants a job, but unfortunately we don’t. We’re working on it though. Going forward we anticipate creating anywhere from 10 to 30 new jobs each year.
