ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, January 28, 1996 TAG: 9601310090
SECTION: NEW RIVER ECONOMY PAGE: 27 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
New River Valley residents can enhance their job prospects by extensive training in computers and related technology - or by learning plumbing.
That is the range of skills needed for a permanent niche in today's economy, according to professionals involved in job placement and training.
It is not that the New River Valley has a bunch of job openings that it cannot fill because nobody has the training.
But at least one woman who places people in temporary jobs has found shortages in some occupational areas.
Metalworkers, woodworkers, skilled machinists, electricians and plumbers are always in demand, said Fay Sutherland, who manages Wytheville-based Western Staff Services.
"We've probably told all our kids to get four-year college degrees, and we're forgetting to tell them we need someone to fix things," she said.
Sutherland has had problems finding people with the skills and willingness to work to fill cashiers' positions. It is not easy to find enough people with the qualifications of honesty and the ability to count, she said, who are willing to take that kind of job.
Machinists, welders, fabricators and sheet-metal workers are among the jobs for which Pete Miller, president of Southern Personnel Services, gets a lot of calls.
He admitted worrying about finding people to fill them when the Pulaski office opened a year ago.
"I no longer have concerns about that. ... Believe it or not, in this valley, we have a tremendous number of highly skilled individuals," he said. "It's understandable why business and industry would want to come especially to the New River Valley."
One job he has not been able to fill is for an employer who needed a four-color press operator, he said, but his office has developed a labor pool of more than 1,200 people in the year since it opened.
"There are not very many jobs in the New River Valley that we don't have qualified people to fill," he said. "We have managed to put 468 to work, all from the New River Valley and most from the county of Pulaski."
"There are lots of jobs out there," Sutherland said. Some are hard to fill because they are low-paying. But even low-skill jobs are plentiful for people who are honest, competent and willing to be there every day, she said.
New River Community College is the best resource for computer training, she said, but it cannot turn out enough trained people to fill all the jobs.
Ron Chaffin, Industrial Technologies Division chairman at NRCC, said the need for computer skills is a general trend, but basic math and reading skills are still important for prospective workers.
A lot of the training pushed by VEC and offered at the community college is in programmatic logic control.
"That's nothing but a computer running a piece of machinery in a factory," he said. ``We're going to be requiring a computer class in everything. We're finding that computers are needed all over, even in welding."
LENGTH: Medium: 61 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: PAUL DELLINGER Buster Mitchell got a job at BBAby CNBFriction in Pulaski County, thanks to Southern Personnel Services.