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The Mississippi Department of Employment Security says more than 10,000 applications have been received for those production and skilled maintenance positions at Toyota Mississippi.
Here's the press release, for your viewing pleasure:
Days after opening its online system to Toyota job seekers, the Mississippi Department of Employment Security accepted it 10,000th application.
More than 8,700 Mississippians have applied.
Applications have poured in from 80 counties across the state and from 36 states across the country.
“The high number of applicants from across the state and country demonstrates that our electronic system provides a convenient way for everyone to apply for Toyota jobs,” MDES Executive Director Les Range said.
“We are very pleased with the progress and are encouraging everyone who is interested in helping build the Toyota Corolla, one of the world’s most popular cars, to apply for a job through our website,” Range said.
Job seekers can connect to the online application system at www.mdes.ms.gov. Part of an effort to help Toyota fill 1,350 production and maintenance jobs, the system accepts applications 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The system is accessible from any Internet-ready computer – at home, at a friend’s home, at public libraries or from one of the more than 50 WIN Job Centers across the state.
The recession forced Toyota to push back its plans to open the Blue Springs plant near Tupelo. On Aug.23, Toyota and MDES jointly announced plans to begin accepting applications through the MDES website.
"We are delighted Toyota is moving forward with its hiring process and is creating so many high-quality jobs for Mississippians," said Gray Swoope, executive director of the Mississippi Development Authority (MDA). "Job creation is a team effort, from Gov. Haley Barbour who leads this process to others who help make it possible.”
The Mississippi Department of Employment Security is a federally funded state agency that provides hiring services for job seekers and employers. The agency provides unemployment benefits and helps workers get needed career training.
Try to fill out a full profile on that site listing all of employment history and using their often miscategorized/defined job titles and skills, etc. so that it's actually useful for a job match and you'll be there for hours trying to figure out what to select to try and match up the skills with your previous positions/job descriptions, etc.
Bottom line, it's terrible and the probability of a white collar job seeker finding a job from there is very low.
The Toyota people must have not bothered to try the site before they agreed to use it to fill their positions. If they had, they would have realized what a mess it is and how inaccurate the screening process is going to be with that system.
Projections for apps may have been, uh, aggressive. But since there were 5,000 applications for those 37 initial salary positions, then the thinking was, "whoa, this could get crazy when they open up for the hourly jobs."
More salaried jobs will be posted later, but Toyota hasn't indicated when.
Whether it's 10,000 or 100,000, I'm just glad I'm not the one having to filter through all of them.
I challenge a white collar job seeker to complete a decent profile on that site in under 2 hours!!
One would think that they would have done something to fix/update that archaic website BEFORE they started taking Toyota applications.
Now back to the actual topic at hand. Only 10,000 applications so far?
What happened to the media projections of 300,000 to 400,000?
At the current pace, they're on track for about 40,000 tops.
If you consider that there is probably a significant drop off in the application rate after the first week or so, then they might get only 20,000-30,000.