Highly motivated by last year’s national labor study that predicted the staggering loss of 50,000 current industry employees over the next 10 years, the American Supply Association is launching an aggressive national campaign to attract the nation’s secondary and post-secondary students to the Plumbing-Heating-Cooling-Piping and industrial Pipe-Valve-Fitting industry.

On Sept. 7, ASA will launch a multi-tiered campaign to nearly 40,000 high school, college and technical schools seeking opportunities to address students about the wide range of career opportunities that exist throughout the PHCP and PVF industry.

Through monthly e-marketing, advertising and personal contact to these 40,000 educators and career counselors, the leadership of ASA is seeking to create a pipeline for the future that will overcome the projected loss of our current labor force retiring over the next ten years.

“Creating consistent outreach to guidance counselors and other influential educators can invoke great interest about lifelong career opportunities for our nation’s emerging labor force” said Bill Erfort, ASA staff liaison spearheading this effort.

Reaching out to schools to create demand is only one facet of the aggressive careers campaign. The next step in the process is to engage ASA members to reach out to local schools in their markets to seek opportunities to connect with students. “We are creating an impressive push-pull effort that we believe will create demand for career opportunities in our industry,” said Erfort.

Over the past year, ASA has built a foundation to attract students. A portal from ASA to its membership has been created that connects job seekers to career openings on member websites. Every member of ASA has been encouraged to establish a “Career Button” on their website, so as ASA directs job seekers to members’ homepages, a student can easily connect.

In addition, first-class marketing materials have been developed for use at career events in the form of the Career Day Kit. The kit contains everything needed to successfully attend a career day and engage students. Materials included in the kit are a pop-up promotional banner, informational brochures for job seekers, a how-to-guide and giveaways to create interest in our industry long after the event is complete.

For more information about this exciting campaign or to order the Career Day Kit, visit the ASA Careers website at www.asa.net/Careers, or contact Bill Erfort at 630-467-0000 and careers@asa.net.