Getting Virginia Back to Work

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Dr. Dave Miles Dr. Dave Leadership Corp

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Ashley Moslak Virginia Employment Commission In early March of 2020 as the quarantines and stay at home orders went into place of course there were no gatherings of people allowed. We were on-track to have one of our best sales months ever but then all of that business simply evaporated. When you make your living in front of groups of people and now there are no groups of people to be in front of… that’s a problem. The TVRC staff and I talked about what they were doing to make-up for the cancelled events. I had experience utilizing the Zoom platform from taping my podcast “Business Smarts Radio with Tom & Dr. Dave”. We all talked and I gave the TVRC staff some ideas of what they could do with their programs so we sent up a test-balloon called “Zoomapalooza” just to get some folks together to connect and actually see and talk to other chamber members. That was successful so we scheduled events such as the Business After-Hours and the Business & Breakfast events online… with some changes. Things are obviously different in an online environment and things that happen by default in an in-person environment sometimes have to be done by design when they are translated online, such as breakout rooms for networking. I spoke with Ashley Moslak, Lead Veterans Services Representative with the VA Employment Commission and she mentioned that VEC could not help do an in-person job fair for one of the regional counties. She wondered if it was possible to do something similar to what we did with the chamber and create an online version of the in-person job fair. That’s exactly what we did. Just like the chamber events where people would organically walk in now had to be changed to a definitive start time and added structure, we did that with the job fair. We approached the TVRC about partnering with that program as a value-add to their members. They readily agreed and a lot of other community partners came on board as well. That first virtual job fair was very successful having over 110 job seekers come through during that afternoon. We have continued to partner with the TVRC to conduct these and now do them on more of a regional basis. They have spread throughout the state and is a great way for other chambers to offer this as a value-add to their members and partner with other community organizations. Because of the job fairs, other online work such hosting and emceeing different conferences and gatherings has come about with really great reviews and feedback. I can credit Toastmasters as a huge help in having the training to facilitate and emcee the events. I would echo Dr. Ivan Misner’s (founder of BNI) whose motto is “Givers Gain”. Put yourself out there, build relationships, give, serve, offer to help where you can and it all comes back around in such a great community as this. Couldn’t be happier with being a proud Top of Virginia Regional Chamber member. To learn more about the virtual regional job fairs, visit https://bit.ly/37tWMxt