Carbonear calling in the Nomads to attract skilled workers, business operators
By Mark Squibb / June 9, 2023
The Town of Carbonear is enlisting the help of nomads — the YOLO Nomads website to be precise — to help attract new labourers to town.
During last week’s meeting, councillor Danielle Doyle moved that council contract the YOLO Nomads for a single community package at a cost of $5,434, including a set up fee. Councillor Ray Noel seconded the motion, and it passed unanimously without much further discussion.
“It’s a recruitment tool,” explained Economic Development Officer Kerri Abbott. “We can choose from four different areas— developers, investors, skilled labourers, skilled professionals, like physician recruitment — and of the four areas we will choose two that we would like to recruit from, and then that company has a distribution list… they will act as our agent in a way.”
In a follow up phone call with Mayor Frank Butt, he said it’s hoped the purchase will attract workers to move to Carbonear.
The idea is to entice people from cities elsewhere to move to Carbonear to live happier, healthier lives.
“We try to promote Carbonear as best as we can, and I believe we do a good job at it, but I’m sure if we had another tool in our toolbox, we could certainly do a better job of recruiting people into our town,” said Butt. “We have everything here in Carbonear the big cities have, except on a much smaller scale. It’s proportional.”
Butt said the YOLO Nomads website can reach into places that Carbonear may not be able to reach.
“Say there’s a physician out there who wants to move from a big city into a smaller location, and maybe they have never heard of Carbonear… We can show them what Carbonear has to offer a new physician coming into Carbonear,” he explained. “It’s giving us one more tool to increase the economy and the population of our town. There’s several functions of YOLO Nomads, but we’re focusing on the attraction of businesses to the area, like a hotel for example, and other businesses as well, and the attraction of professionals to our town.”
Butt said he hopes the purchase will attract people for the long-term.
“They may take a three-year contract with a corporation, and they may be here for three years, and after that they may say, ‘You know, Carbonear is not such a bad place to live. They have all the amenities, they have all kinds of retail stores, they have all kinds of recreation facilities here, they have educational institutes’ … The plan is to keep people here. We don’t want them to come for a short period of time and then move on,” said Butt.
The mayor said that as far as he understands it, the website will track how many people express an interest in working in Carbonear, and should the subscription not meet expectations, council will simply choose to not renew it when the subscription expires.