I live in the “other Minneapolis”- the one in Kansas. I am sure most of you never knew that there is a Minneapolis, Kansas, but there is. As an industrial master distributor and manufacturer of fasteners, being in the “Great American Desert” is sometimes more real than I would wish. With just 2,000 people in our town, at Huyett, we must innovate to find the talent to support our growth.

In 2019, we elected to significantly expand our e-commerce. I was doing some personal recruiting in support of this effort and noted in regional newspaper headlines that Cabela’s – the outdoor retailer – was laying off a significant number of people in Sidney, Nebraska, a town of 6,700 in the panhandle of the state, near Wyoming. I started reaching out to people from Cabela’s via LinkedIn. One such recruit asked me if I was going to the job fair. “What job fair?” I asked.