Thurmond and Kia officials at a ceremony inaugurating the online hiring process, at West Georgia Technical College, Jan. 8, 2008. (Dave Bender)
In a just-concluded jobs program, over 43,000 applicants swamped Kia Motors' online hiring site for their SUV plant being built in west Georgia. The applicants were vying for 2,500 production and maintenance jobs at the West Point plant.
State Labor Commissioner Michael Thurmond says this is the first totally online job application process for a major employer in Georgia:
“Any person who had access to a com puter could go to kiajobs.com – apply for a job. We also - for those who did not have Internet access – we allowed individuals to use our computers at our 53 career centers around the state of Georgia.”Thurmond added that some 400 walk-in applicants came to a recruitment center set up at West Georgia Technical College in LaGrange. A similar number applied with Kia at a recent job fair held in Columbus. The online hiring program was inaugurated only a month ago.
Thurmond says that most of them are Georgians:
“We're very proud of the fact that between 70 and 75 percent of the people who applied online are Georgia residents.”
Kia's hiring and job training program at West Georgia Technical College set up this center, with several hundred computer stations, to aid the process. (Dave Bender)
But getting that job – and they're paying between 15 and 23 dollars an hour – is just the first step.
Ron Jackson, Commissioner of the Technical College System of Georgia, set out the hiring path at the program's gala inauguration in early January:
“Once they are selected and employed by kia, they will go through a full training program that is generated by Quickstart, supported by our technical college system, at the training center that will be at the Kia site.”The $1.2 billion dollar plant is due to open in Nov., 2009, will produce about 300,000 Sorrento SUVs annually.
Click here for more GPB News coverage of ongoing developments in the Kia operation.
