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Springfield manufacturers need workers. There's a day of open job interviews coming up.

Sep 28, 2017

QPS Employment Group, a temporary-job agency that opened a Springfield office in 2015, plans to host open interviews from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 6, the company said in a news release.

The interviews take place at QPS's local office, 1452 E. Kearney St.

Beth Johns, branch manager of the Springfield QPS office, told the News-Leader in an email that the company is seeking to fill more than 80 openings in this area.

"Most of these positions are light industrial, manufacturing positions," Johns said. "Most all of our positions are temporary-to-hire."

That means that the work is temporary (mostly on a 40-hour-per-week schedule), but if an employee does well in the job, he or she might be brought on more permanently.

In Springfield, Johns said QPS is mostly recruiting for the following types of jobs:

Assembly
Electrical Assembly
Mechanical Assembly
Drafting
Mechanical design
General warehouse labor
Forklift positions
Welding positions
Machinist positions

In a news release, the president of QPS said, “One of the greatest needs in our workforce right now are those candidates who wish to work in manufacturing."

Much has been made of the "decline of manufacturing" in news reports over recent years, but as the USA TODAY Network reports, sometimes companies are pushing to hire even though the number of manufacturing jobs is down overall.

Johns said that in Springfield, it is difficult to recruit for manufacturing jobs.

"Since the unemployment rate is so low," she said, citing Greene County's recent rate of just 3.1 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, "it makes it really tough to find good candidates."

That situation pushes companies to look at "alternative methods, such as automation," to get the job done, Johns said, which can eventually affect how many employees companies need to hire.

"That may affect the future of manufacturing for sure," Johns said, "but for now, the needs still seem to be strong."

"Several of our clients are seeing a hiring push due to the recent hurricanes," Johns said, "as they make products that would help rebuild infrastructure in those devastated areas."

Johns said Springfield's QPS has more than 20 openings in clerical work, including these:

Positions "that require light to heavy accounting and bookkeeping experience" such as accounts payable or accounts receivable
Medical billing or coding
Some administrative assistant positions
"Some of these positions do not require experience," Johns said, citing the medical billing and coding positions. "(Those jobs require) just someone with really solid data entry, such as typing and 10-key experience."

QPS's Manufacturers' Day hiring push will take place at 50 Midwestern branch offices. The company is hoping to fill 12,000 current openings.

QPS is based in Brookfield, Wisconsin and was founded in 1985, according to the release.

It currently employs more than 6,000 temporary employees weekly and works with 1,500 companies in the Midwest.

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