SARASOTA COUNTY (WFLA) – ‘Now Hiring’ signs aren’t hard to spot nowadays as more and more industries struggle with labor shortages. A new campaign in Sarasota County is aimed at building up the local workforce.

Visit Sarasota County and the Economic Development Corporation of Sarasota County (EDC) announced the ‘Work Where You Want to Live’ campaign Monday morning. The hope is to lure in new residents to fill open positions across the county.

“I give the team at Visit Sarasota County huge kudos for bridging the conversation between come visit Sarasota and Work Where You Want to Live,” said EDC CEO and President Lisa Krouse. “They are recognizing that while they are attracting tourism, there was a whole lot of good that can be done to support our business community as well,” she continued.

“At VSC and the EDC we are listening to our local businesses, and they are telling us that, like so many employers around the country, they need help building their workforces,” said Visit Sarasota County President Virginia Haley. “We know from years of analyzing our visitor and relocation data that people tend to visit here before deciding to move to Sarasota County. Thus, we’re targeting the markets that often send us visitors and providing all of the resources someone would need to find work and settle down.”

Two local companies, Miles Partnership and Knight Strategic Communications, are helping with marketing and outreach. They’re targeting areas such as New York, Chicago, Boston, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and Atlanta.

The targeted individuals will be directed to the Visit Sarasota website, which offers relocation information, and the EDC website, which includes a job search tool that aggregates open positions with local employers. 

In addition to attracting new employees, the campaign aims to attract new companies and entrepreneurs to the area.

“We’ve seen a record number of business relocations and expansions in Sarasota County this year,” says EDC President and CEO Lisa Krouse. “However, as these companies grow, they’re facing the same labor shortages as the rest of our country. Through our collaboration with VSC, we hope that our efforts to recruit new talent and expand the labor pool with enhance our local business climate and allow room for more business relocation and expansion.”