The spree to hire is on

It's every business owner's No. 1 complaint: finding good people to hire. And it's getting even harder because of falling unemployment.

But one company in Fort Myers continues to report hiring success — despite the fact that Lee County's unemployment rate dropped to 5.2% in June from 6.3% in the same month one year ago.

Alta Resources is doing so well, actually, it hired 264 people in a single day July 30. The one-day job fair it hosted attracted 538 applicants for jobs that entail phone work helping people sign up for health insurance plans during the upcoming open-enrollment period.

“We're still finding really good candidates in the marketplace,” says Paul Makurat, Fort Myers managing director for Wisconsin-based Alta Resources. The company plans to hire more than 1,000 people in Fort Myers within the next few months.

The percentage of job offers to applicants is about the same as last year when Alta went on a similar recruiting spree. “I haven't seen a marked change in recruiting,” Makurat says.

Many of the Alta jobs are seasonal, so Makurat says some of the applicants whose jobs ended last spring have returned. “It says something about the economy: They're not finding anything better in the meantime,” Makurat says.

Alta offers the kind of work many people seek, especially with flexible work schedules. Employees can pick shifts and days of the week they want to work, for example. “That's one of the things a lot of people like,” Makurat says.