July 12, 2019 How Jacksonville recruits major business
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With over 40 active projects on the docket for JaxUSA Partnership, the economic development arm of JaxChamber, Northeast Florida has positive momentum in its recruitment of worldwide businesses.
Earlier this year, e-commerce company Wayfair broke ground on a distribution center that is expected to bring 250 jobs to the area, and Northeast Florida may see more big news with three possible deals closing in the next couple months.
"It's there for us to get, we just have to get to the finish line and close them," JaxUSA President Aundra Wallace said.
The Business Journal spoke to Wallace about how recruiting businesses to the First Coast has changed over the years and what industries are potentially targeting the River City.
What do you want our readers to know about the state of business recruitment for the region?
It's going quite well. Business recruitment depends heavily on relationships that JaxUSA has built for the better part of our existence. We have very good connections with site consultants, commercial brokers and accounting firms that are representing their clients and are seeking to establish operations in locations across the country. Our relationships have allowed us to gain access to information when businesses are seeking to move to various regions and allows us to be in a very competitive position in recruiting them to Northeast Florida.
How is recruitment going in the IT and innovation career fields?
We see a great deal of demand in this industry with data security and data analytics, but there is room for us to improve. Talent is the issue and that is a problem across the board around the country. We are focusing a lot of our efforts on building our workforce, because if we continue to recruit additional fintech-related companies to the region, they are all asking about our talent pools, and we are having great conversations with our educational institutions.
What specific industry sectors are showing interest in Northeast Florida?
We are seeing an uptick in financial services and transportation/logistics due to companies wanting to be closer to the port. Manufacturing and healthcare are also doing well. The industry clusters we focus on are advanced manufacturing, transportation/logistics, health/biomedical and IT innovation.
What about international businesses and their interest in Jacksonville and Northeast Florida?
International businesses have shown strong interest when companies want to do foreign direct investment here. Sometimes they are looking to be in closer proximity to a deep-water port, so those investment opportunities are favorable to us, because Jaxport is one of the fastest-growing ports in the country.
How have the advances at Jaxport helped business recruitment?
Wayfair has already been announced and that has allowed us, from a shipping standpoint, to have a competitive advantage on some of our competitors in the state. Jaxport is a huge component of what we market, and it's helping us out a great deal.
How business recruitment has changed over the years?
Businesses used to be worried about strictly labor or operational costs when they moved into a new location. The challenge now is attracting talent. Companies are asking, first and foremost, what is your talent pipeline? The workforce development piece has swung back to the forefront and economic development probably forgot about that as the No. 1 thing that people are most concerned with. If you win the war on talent development and attraction, then you are going to win more of your battles on business retention, recruitment and expansion.
Another thing you're seeing is low unemployment. We are around 2.6 percent unemployment in our region. What you are seeing is people who have a job are now seeking other career pathways. We are at a crossroads of how to get people into new careers and they also have children in pre-K through 12th grade. When we get their parents in a new career pathway, it sends a different message to them from an educational standpoint with their children where they are getting their kids more prepared for similar careers.