More than 500 people applied for jobs at Boeing's plant in North Charleston in the first two and a half hours the assembler/fabricator position was posted, overwhelming the state job website and resulting in an extension of this weekend's application window.
Before 2 a.m. Saturday, the ReadySC website already featured a heading that revised the previous plan, which was to accept 3,000 applications for spots in a potential employee pool and then shut down the listing.
"The Boeing recruitment will be available on the site until at least Sunday, August 14th," the statement on the site read. "If you are having trouble submitting your application, please try again later."
Despite the slow-loading website www.jobaps.com/sccat, roughly 1,500 people had submitted applications by 8 a.m., according to the ReadySC spokeswoman for the Boeing project, Lauren Hanson.
In an email early this morning, Hanson said that due to the technical difficulties, the site will be open the rest of the weekend, even if that means the state-sponsored training program receives more than 3,000 applications.
A Boeing spokeswoman reached Saturday by text message said the number of applications received so far was expected and encouraging.
"Since Boeing has been in SC we've gotten overwhelming responses to all our open requisitions which is fantastic," Candy Eslinger, the spokeswoman, wrote. "That tells us people are interested and excited about Boeing being here, and want to come help us make history building this amazing airplane. This process gives us a greater pool of qualified applicants for the positions we have open."
Earlier this week, Eslinger, the Charleston spokeswoman for the Chicago-based aviation giant, said this weekend's solicitation is meant to attract 1,000 qualified workers.
On Wednesday, Eslinger emphasized that the hiring process is not immediate but encouraged people to apply when the listing went live Saturday at 12:01 a.m., promising an "easy" application process. The actual application steps may have been, but navigating from page to page earlier this morning on the website was not. The speed of the site seems to have improved in recent hours.
Whether that apparent improvement is a result of a ReadySC fix or a slackening in the pace of applications is not clear at this point. Exactly when the application drive will conclude is also not clear.
Hanson, the ReadySC spokeswoman who is monitoring the situation this weekend along with a colleague in Columbia, did not immediately return an email seeking clarification.
This is the third application drive that Boeing has conducted through ReadySC.
At the end of 2009, about 10,000 people applied, and once that pool was exhausted, Boeing, through ReadySC, solicited another 1,000 applications in June, Hanson said earlier this week.
Applicants for the entry-level positions must be available to work anytime, be able to stand for long periods and work on elevated spaces. They also must be high school graduates, or equivalent, and have at least one year of relevant work experience.
If they qualify, prospective employees must then complete a multi-step training program before they can be considered for full-time employment at Boeing. Eslinger would not say what the positions pay, only that the company's compensation package is "above average" for the region.
Boeing has about 5,000 employees and contractors at its Charleston International Airport site, she said. That figure includes workers at two factories that supply 787 fuselage sections. The new third plant, where Boeing is assembling its first locally produced Dreamliner, is expected to have a payroll of 3,800.
Eslinger said Boeing has been hiring about 20 people a month.
The first South Carolina-made 787 is scheduled for delivery next year, and by the end of 2013, three planes a month will be assembled in North Charleston.
A National Labor Relations Board complaint, alleging Boeing illegally moved the Dreamliner assembly line from the Seattle, Wa. area to South Carolina to escape union strikes, looms over the plane-making activities. And on Friday, NLRB Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon responded to a Congressional subpoena for documents from the case with only a portion of what U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., requested.
Source: http://www.postandcourier.com
No comments:
Post a Comment