[October 2008]

A top official with Excel Mining said he is “totally satisfied” with a job fair that drew about 40 hopefuls for mining jobs with the company to the Pike County JobSight workforce center recently.

“I was well pleased with the turnout,” Elmer Howard, director of Human Resources for Excel Mining, said of the company’s first JobSight job fair. Howard recommended that other companies take advantage of the assistance JobSight can offer in attracting, testing, and screening potential employees at job fairs.

The prospective miners who visited the JobSight at the Big Sandy Community and Technical College (Big Sandy CTC) campus in Pikeville filled out applications, took a mechanical aptitude test, and completed JobFit—JobSight’s online skills assessment test—to measure their career aptitudes.

The highest-scoring and best qualified candidates were to be interviewed by Excel Mining officials.

Howard said that in addition to seeking experienced miners, his company was looking for inexperienced miners to fill about 10 spots in a planned “Green Hat” training program for new miners.

This program will offer participants classroom instruction on mine safety and techniques, and the opportunity to work under the supervision of an experienced miner.

Without such structured programs that offer hands-on training, it is difficult for inexperienced miners to get hired at mines, Howard said. That’s because for safety reasons they are only allowed to do manual labor.

Inexperienced miners are forbidden from operating most major mining equipment until they have been trained and obtain certification as experienced miners, he said.

Howard said the new miner training program not only helps Excel Mining find workers, but it also serves as a way to open a door of opportunity to people who want the good pay, benefits, and other pluses of a job in the mining industry.

That opportunity was eagerly sought by the hopefuls who attended the job fair, including Paintsville resident Daniel Coots.

Coots, 21, said he hopes to be able to get his “experienced miner card” through Excel Mining’s training program.

“I’m just tired of these little jobs that don’t take you anywhere,” said Coots, who has worked at various jobs like paving and landscaping. “In mines, you make good quality money and there are opportunities for advancement.”

Michael Wayne Thacker, 32, of Pikeville, said he currently works as a telemarketer, but the $10 an hour that job pays is not enough to take care of his family the way he wants to.

“I’ve got another baby on the way,” he said. “I need more money.”

Thacker, who already has his experienced miner’s card, said mining work is certainly physically tougher than telemarketing. But the money, benefits, and sense of camaraderie and pride that go along with working in a mine crew are worth the harder labor, he added.

Speaking from JobSight’s perspective, Joyce Wilcox, Business Services coordinator for the Big Sandy Area Community Action Program, said “we really got some good candidates.”

JobSight Business Services are delivered in Pike, Floyd, Johnson, Martin, and Magoffin counties by the Big Sandy Area Community Action Program under contract with Eastern Kentucky Concentrated Employment Program, Inc. (EKCEP). EKCEP administers the JobSight workforce network in 23 eastern Kentucky counties that comprise the region’s coalfields.

Wilcox said Big Sandy CTC has applied for a grant to help fund Excel Mining’s inexperienced miner training program. The grant would pay about 75 percent of the training costs, freeing EKCEP to use its workforce development funds to cover the portion of the costs which are typically paid by an employer.

This way, the only expense to the employer would be employees’ training wage paid during the training period, Wilcox said.

For more information about JobSight and EKCEP's Business Solutions Services, contact Joyce Wilcox at 606-886-2948 or Crawford Blakeman at 606-436-5751.