 Aloha and welcome to Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We're a show that broadcasts every Thursday from 2 to 2.30, from downtown Halaululu in the Plaza building, Plaza Center in the ThinkTech studios. We focus on success stories of businesses in Hawaii and some of the organizations that support them and make them more successful. And today we're going to have one of those organizations that is a small business of its own but also supports and helps other small businesses throughout the state. Before we jump into the show today I just wanted to mention that I was just recently named a member of the board for the Small Business Regulatory Review Board for the state of Hawaii and the city and county of Halaululu. And we're tasked with reviewing all the laws, the rules, regulations that impact small businesses statewide and at the city and county level. It was a very exciting meeting, it was very eye-opening. We got to talk to a lot of different people about the oceans, about the harbors and also about the department taxation. There's a lot going on. These are public meetings, they're open to the public. So if you want to come down, they are published, the meeting dates and times, as well as the agenda. So anybody who wants to have input into the process, please let me know and you can reach me at reg at regbaker.com and we'll be sure to get you the information. And I think combined with what I do with the Small Business Administration sitting on the board for regulatory fairness, we get to cover both here at the state, we get to cover state issues as well as federal issues and we've had some real success stories. We've been able to fix some challenges that the liquor commissions were having in record time. And so there is immediate benefit to this and it's nice to be able to attack these issues and problems at both federal and state and local levels. So we're very fortunate that we do have representation at both levels in that regulatory environment. Now with that being said, I'd like to transition into an area that also has an awful lot of rules and regulations. It's a very tricky area and we've got the Hawaii Employment Company here today. It's part of the Hawaii group. We've got Sean Knox who's the president and CEO and then we have Vanessa Perez who's one of the professional recruiters out there. And we're going to talk a little bit about the employment situation here in Hawaii and maybe some options that we have to try to make it a little better for the employers out there that are looking for good staff. So Sean, Vanessa, welcome to the show. Thank you very much for having us and thank you for being such a strong advocate for the small businesses in Hawaii. We always need as much of a voice out there as we possibly can get. And just being in our corners is a tremendous asset. Well, I appreciate that. And it's something that I'm very passionate about and I try to do it through the Chamber of Commerce as well and there's different vehicles. So anything I can do if people just let me know where the challenges are and the issues are, we can maybe develop a plan to address them. Great. But thank you. Yeah. But you've got some challenges too. I mean, we've got a pretty tight market over here right now. But before we jump into that, Sean, for the people who have not heard who you are, why don't you give us a quick bio? Sounds good. Aloha, everyone. So Sean Knox, I'm a kid. I was born and raised on the Big Island, moved away for a little while in England for a few years and moved back to Hawaii in 1999. Was very blessed to be able to start an agency with my wife, two mom and pop operation in 2005 called Point Employment. And then managed to make our way through the recession and partnered up with a great team of investors and business partners, Matt Delaney, Scott Mitre, who had already formed the Hawaii Group, brought us into their Ohana and we formally launched Hawaii Employment in 2010. And at that point, we were really just doing staffing for office and accounting professionals. And as we saw more demand in the business marketplace, we found the need to staff individuals in the agriculture sector in hospitality. We started bringing in recruiting talent that had that specific background. Now we have 25 staff throughout the state. Wow, that's grown pretty nice. It's grown quite a bit. We're on all of the major islands. We have a really great presence in the educational staffing community. We're at the convention center today with the schools of the futures conference. And one of the areas that we've been wanting to get into, and we've dabbled in a little bit, but we really haven't had the right person to carry the banner for Hawaii Employment is, is really targeting military and government contracts and finding those veterans that are transitioning out, those veterans that are under or unemployed, as well as military spouses and finding them and being that bridge between them and these great opportunities that are available in Hawaii. Well, and that's a great segue to introduce Vanessa. All right, Vanessa, this is an area that you've got some real experience with. A little bit rich. Great to be back on the show with you. And thank you so much because it was your wonderful connection that allowed me to meet Sean and, you know, now I'm part of the team. So very grateful. It's an amazing company and it's very exciting to join, you know, as a veteran and a military spouse, being able to join a company that's really, you know, committed to hiring veterans and military spouses and getting them connected to great employment is a dream job for me. So it's awesome to be part of the team and we're really starting to hit some really good runs. Now, you've been in Hawaii for a little while, right? About nine years now, Rich. Nine years. And before then, where were you? So I think people probably get from my accent. Not really from here, but I'm Australian. So I served 23 years with the Australian military, the Army, and my background's in rail management and a little bit of TV. And I came here in 09 when I married Bill Perez, retired Marine now. And really for most of that time, I've worked with the transitioning military community. So, you know, I'm really passionate about getting veterans great jobs and connecting them to great opportunities and be able to do that now on a larger scale. It's just exciting. And it's so rewarding or pleasing for me to hear this because I had to go through this back in the 70s and there wasn't a lot of support back then and it was a little different environment. It's nice to see the support that's out there to help the transition of some of our military folks and whether their career or not, everybody needs to go through that transition. Before we jump into that a little bit, what I'd like to ask is, we've got a very tight labor market here and we've had one that's been very tight for a while. It's one of the biggest challenges for any business is to find good qualified staff. Are we still in that tight market? Are we still struggling with that? Do you see any light at the end of the tunnel? What do you think, Sean? The light at the end of the tunnel, I'm sure it's there but right now the employers are scrambling. It is tight. It's tight whether you're talking to someone out in Lihue or all the way out in Kohala on the big island, you're throughout the state. It's tough. It's tough for an employer to find the talent they need in order to support their organization and meet their business goals and support their clients that they're working with. So if you're an employer out there right now and you're having a hard time finding people, it's, well, you can call us but you're not alone. It is a tight labor market. There's a big construction boom going on right now that's drawing in a lot of labor. The hotels are cranking at full throttle all over maximum. Well, they've been setting records now almost every month. Absolutely, and they're doing just a great job bringing in Aloha into the state and the tourism sector and they are great employers and so they retain, they hire and they retain a lot of great talent in the state and that drives business in for the restaurants and the retail that are now opening up but finding themselves challenged to meet that labor. Snowballs, you start filling up the hotel rooms, you get higher occupancy, now all of a sudden you need to start having the restaurants that's gonna be taking care of and feeding them and all the retail, it's a real, it's great economic boom, it's a great engine for the state but it creates a tight labor market. Absolutely. And plus I see a lot of the talent, the younger generation too sometimes when they graduate or when they're ready to move into the workforce. They're exploring options not only here locally but also on the mainland and some will end up leaving. Yeah, and that's challenging and we all know that Hawaii's not a cheap place to live and as a parent myself, I hope that my kids when they grow up and they go to college that there'll be an opportunity or there will be opportunities for them to move back and there'll be a cost of living that will sustain that their careers will be able to sustain. Well, I think at a lot of time it boils down to jobs. Sure, yeah. And right now there's opportunity but we don't have enough staff to fill the positions that we're looking for, at least qualified staff and that's where Vanessa, you have a possible solution maybe not for everything but you could put a dent into this a little bit, right? Yeah, look, we're really excited about being able to bridge that gap between talent that's looking for jobs or talent pools looking for jobs and companies that need the talent. And the military and the military spouse community is somewhat untapped and I know a lot of organizations that I talk to say, wow, we can hire veterans and military spouses like how can we get them? Many don't really know how to access that talent pool or understand the transition environment, you know? So it's hopefully one of the things that we're gonna be able to bridge the gap and tap into these great talent pools. You know, we have around about 40,000 military spouses on this island, I don't think a lot of people realize it and the majority of them are underemployed or unemployed. And they're looking for something to do, they want to be employed. You know, one of the myths I really want to dispel is that Hawaii really want to hire you, we have jobs. We want you to come work with us and get you connected to great opportunities. They're out there, so yeah. So now you can act as somewhat of a bridge between the employers that are looking for people and then the military commands that have the people and you know, sometimes they're not connecting and that's where you can come in and help with that process. All right, so explain to me how we're gonna do this. I mean, how do the employers come to you and tell you here's what we're looking for and are they doing that or can they be doing more? Sure, we have some great strategic partnerships with different employers and it ranges from low-skilled to very technical positions. And it really just depends on their need at the time, whether it's the banking institutions, insurance, or driving positions at the airport, it's a wide range. And so when they let us know what their needs are and they're projected to hiring goals are for the upcoming months, it could be tomorrow, it could be next month, it could be next year. We work with them to be that strategic partner to make sure that the labor force is in place so they can make sure the cars are turned around, the car lot, in the right amount of time, that the landfills are properly staffed, the tech positions that come through have the talent that they need in order to meet their goals. Well, and one of the challenges that we hear almost every single year and have for quite some time are teachers. You know, we're short of teachers. And I would imagine that there could be a solution in there somewhere. Definitely, and so we're really hoping to tap into that spouse market to fill a lot of the teacher positions that we work with at the private schools. Everything from pre-K to 12th grade and some work at Job Corps as well. So some past skilled positions and we're really looking forward to getting into that labor pool. Now we're gonna have to go on a break here in just a second, but part of what I wanna talk about, maybe in as much detail as we can in the second half, is how do we get this process, and it sounds like you've already got it started, but how do we make it bigger and better and create a higher level of awareness? So people are gonna be able to say, you know, I'm an employer, I'm looking for some help, I'm gonna go talk to Vanessa or Sean and I'm gonna tell them what I need or somebody in the military. And maybe even the commands themselves can help with this process. So we'll get into that in a little bit of detail here right after the break, but this is business in Hawaii with Reg Baker, we're gonna go on a short break, we'll be back in about 60 seconds and we'll get more into the employment details here shortly. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. You can be the greatest, you can be the best, you can be the king, conveyin' all your chess, you can beat the world, you can talk to God, go bangin' I'm Ethan Allen, host of Likeable Science on Think Tech Hawaii. Every Friday afternoon at 2 p.m., I hope you'll join me for Likeable Science, where we'll dig into science, dig into the meat of science, dig into the joy and delight of science. We'll discover why science is indeed fun, why science is interesting, why people should care about science, and care about the research that's being done out there. It's all great, it's all entertaining, it's all educational, so I hope to join me for Likeable Science. Welcome back, this is business in Hawaii with Reg Baker, we broadcast live every Thursday from 2 to 2.30, and we focus on success stories in Hawaii about the small and mid-sized business market, and also some of the organizations that help support them. Today we have Hawaii Employment here, we're talking about a very tight labor market, but there are people available, and highly trained people, and they can get up and running very quickly, and so we're gonna talk a little bit about how we can find those people. Now, we've got the supply, we've got the people out there, and I think you told me during the break that there's a lot of them, and they're easy relatively to find. What we really need are the employers to come in and give us what the job requirements are, and then you can get more specific in filling them. I don't want to take all that out of you, say that for you, but that's basically, how do you find the employers, and how do you convince them to let you know what they need? Well, many of them are starting to find us now through the presence that we have at a lot of the job fairs, so there's always a lot of companies at military job fairs or at the job fairs looking for veterans as well. They don't always get all of the talent that they need, and so through those relationships that we have, we've got some really fantastic strategic partnerships with some great companies, but we have more talent than we have companies to connect them to. You know, I've worked with the transitioning military community for eight years now, so I'm pretty well known in that industry, and particularly across all of the veteran support services, you know, like Catholic Charities and US Vets and Pathways, all of the sorts of organisations that work with Vets now to get them connected to employment. So we have those relationships, and we get constant referrals. Now we're really looking at expanding those relationships with more companies to get veterans great jobs really fast. Well, I think that makes a lot of sense. I mean, sometimes these job fairs are maybe just once or twice or a few times a year, but this is an ongoing process, and people are moving in and out of the service and transitioning all the time. And so, you know, rather than waiting for a job fair, it's nice to be plugged into this and have the employers in place so that when you find a perfect candidate that's exactly what they're looking for, bang, it can happen quick. And we're doing it now, and it's really exciting. It's interesting, Reg, that you talk about transitioning because we, a lot of people, companies might not know this, but we, about 8,000 veterans will transition each year from Hawaii. We retain about 3% of them. And you know, the great work that Craig and Chase did with the Master Council really established those numbers. Like, people didn't know this, so we're losing this huge talent pool of great talent, you know, highly qualified. And what's sad is that's one of the lowest retention rates in the country. Most states will have a double-digit that had 10%, 15%, 20% retention. We're really low in those single digits. And you know, it's really, if the military community don't feel that they can get a job fast enough to keep them here and then sustain their living, then they're out of here. And you know, it'd be great to work with business here locally to keep more, retain more. And you know, maybe we could be around the 15% or 20% retention pretty quickly if veterans are connected to jobs quickly. And you know, there are a number of programs that the military have that are fantastic, that are, you know, working with the business community to kind of bridge that gap as well, where, you know, they can create internships and apprenticeships and bring veterans on to get experience in the company before they transition. And you may know more about this than I do, but I had heard that there was a program that actually will pay for some of the cost of a veteran moving into a public sector type of position that they'll pay them to go through the training. What's actually, yeah, there are a couple of programs under the Army. They've got CSP, which is Career Skills Program, and the wider projects comes under the banner of Skill Bridge, but it allows organizations to bring on a military service member in transition three to six months beforehand. Usually they do a course, so they'd get a certification, maybe an AMP or a CDL, and that actually allows them to move into employment with that company or another one very quickly after. But the DOD foot the bill for that. I mean, the service members being paid for the duration of that internship or that fellowship. And, you know, they're great programs that organizations can be part of. And how does a company find out more information on this and maybe start participating? They can come talk to us. We actually really want to partner a little bit more with some of the services to facilitate these sorts of programs. But they can, you know, they can contact me and I can get them in contact with the program coordinators as well if they want to liaise directly. And do you have a phone number or a website or an email? Or how do they get in touch with you? Great. Yeah, our direct line is 695-3974 and our website's hi-in-employment.com. Very good. And if they go to the website, there'll be a way to reach out and make contact and send an email. Go to the contact page and send us a note. And that could work for both the employers and prospective employees. Absolutely, absolutely. And if, you know, people want to call me directly, my number is 808-628-7675 and we can talk directly about, you know, veteran hiring initiatives. Super, very good. Now, we've got the employer side of the equation and what we need is more positions because you've got more talent than you have positions. So if somebody needed somebody quickly, you've got an inventory of folks that you can introduce them to right away. Pretty much. But you always want to make sure you maintain that inventory of talent. So how do people in the military, and I would imagine also their spouses, you know, how would they reach out to you, I guess the same way? Well, Vanessa's been doing a great job at developing these strategic relationships on the basis and they've had some excellent events in the last few weeks. You can maybe refer the transition summit they had where they had, I think it was, yeah, about 1,000 people. Wow. 1,000 people there participating in the transition summit. That was on the base out there at school field? Yeah, it was a series of events over three days and if you're in transition and you're not plugged into the transition summits, they come every year. The Chamber of Commerce partners with hiring our heroes and they put on phenomenal events where companies come down from the mainland like Amazon and Microsoft and troops to transportation and talk about how to get hired. That's why we're not keeping the talent here. Yeah, yeah, that's it. And some of them have jobs here too and in fact, there's some exciting projects coming out of that summit with some really good things that are gonna ramp up here to really try and retain more talent on this island. But so that was huge. I mean, the career fair had 200 employers there and more than 1,000 people transitioning through and they had workshops. I presented at the military spouse symposium and there's 110 spouses in the room. It was great turnout. And more recently, the women in leadership symposium had 200 leaders and I went and spoke at it. And it's the spouse side of the equation that sometimes gets forgotten too because a lot of these military, particularly the career ones, they moved around from different duty stations during their career and generally speaking, their spouses are working somewhere. So they've got some good talent themselves and they're trained and they're ready to go as well. So we don't wanna forget about that side. Because I think the numbers you can be found, Vanessa, there's maybe 40,000 military spouses here on a long way and that's a huge leap forward. And I would imagine a number of them have talked before and they've been teachers and they've got that experience. Absolutely and medical backgrounds and administrative backgrounds, just phenomenal talent. And data shows that on average, 85% of military spouses have some kind of higher education level. They have phenomenal expertise and talent. And they just don't often get plugged into employment swiftly enough or it's hard for them. They give up and we wanna change that landscape and let them know there's work here and we would like to introduce them to companies that want them. One of the comments that I've received when I've talked about this in the past is that they say, well, the military spouses, they're only gonna be here for a few years and then they're gone. Well, my response is how many of your employees stick around for a few years anyways? Yeah, there's usually, include the teachers with that. What's the longevity for the average teacher at an entry level? Some of them don't even last six months. You know, the landscape now where you're lucky to have people for six months, three is loyalty, it's pure loyalty. I speak to a lot of companies who say, what, I could have them for two or three years? That's fantastic. So that's just part of dispelling that myth and changing the discussion and the, I don't know, there's some mindset. There's a lot of rumors go around that it's hard to get a job here and companies don't want you because they're only here for two years, but companies happy to have you for two years. Well, and some of the other myths that are out there, is that sometimes maybe some of the training doesn't exactly fit in because they know how to march, they know how to shoot, they know how to sleep in the jungle or whatever, but the military these days, a lot different than what it was 20 years ago, even 10 years ago. There's a lot of very sophisticated equipment, there's a lot of technology, there's a lot more going on than just pulling a trigger and marching around. I mean, some of these folks have some really leading edge skills. They really do, they really do and they're marketable and companies need that expertise in problem-solving and innovation and project management and financial management and leadership. And some of the great characteristics you're always going to get with military and even spouses is resiliency and being able to work together in a team environment. Adaptable, flexible, agile, resilience. If nothing else, they're constantly learning new skills. I mean, there's a lot of training that's involved in the military and they're constantly learning new things. And so that ability to learn and grasp and execute is something that they're very good at. One of the things that was coming out at the military spouse symposium is, spouses are really looking for flexible working conditions as well. Maybe they work part-time freelance from home and some big companies like Amazon have military spouse hiring initiative. So if you're an organization in Hawaii and you're looking for great talent to work flexibly, remotely from home, military spouses are a great solution and get in contact with us and we'll create some opportunities to meet. And a lot of times they have their own computers already. Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, that's great. Well, we've got about a minute left and we're gonna have to wrap up here, believe it or not, we just fast-forwarded through this whole episode. But one more time for the people that are looking and the employers that may have positions. What is the phone number and a website that they can reach out and get more information? Yeah, please contact us. It's a statewide line, 808-695-3974. Our website is hi-employment.com. We upload our job availability, the job postings daily. So it's refreshed. Should have a list of the different locations throughout the state and the different opportunities that we have, both on the direct hire side as well as the contract and temporary staff. That's great. And we're entering a busy time of the year right now. There's a lot of retailers out there that's looking for some seasonal help. So there's a lot of work available. We just need to find the people. Yeah, very good. Excellent. All right, thank you both for being on the show again today. Thanks for having us. This is Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We broadcast live every Thursday from 2 to 2.30. We focus on success stories of companies and individuals in Hawaii. I hope to see you again next week. Until then, aloha.