ENID – In early May, Janet Byrum was concerned when she realized that there were 70 job openings at AdvancePierre Foods in Enid.
But within a few days the number of job openings at the company dropped to 47, said Byrum, director of HR operations west in Enid for AdvancePierre Foods.
With more than 1,600 employees at production facilities, a distribution center and a bakery and in administration in Enid, recruiting and hiring the workforce is a never-ending process.
“We are always hiring people,” Byrum said. “When you are not fully staffed you are not as prepared as you would like to be.”
The production facilities operate two shifts daily and the distribution center operates 24 hours per day, seven days a week, she said.
Being outside of a major metropolitan area limits the hiring pool. In April, Garfield County’s labor force totaled 32,638 workers with an unemployment rate of 3.1 percent, according to the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission.
So Byrum and her personnel managers at the facilities expand their hiring search beyond Garfield County.
One target group is small towns in northwest Oklahoma and other areas of the state.
“We recruit a lot of farm kids from small communities,” Byrum said.
Job opportunities are often limited for people who complete high school in smaller communities. Getting a job at AdvancePierre offers them the opportunity to stay in the general area.
“We have to convince folks we do have something to offer,” she said.
Pay for machine operators ranges from $11 to $15 per hour. Some jobs pay up to $25 per hour.
“We are extremely competitive when it comes to wages and on benefits we are ahead of the curve,” she said. “We have a health and wellness center you can go to on day one.”
AdvancePierre’s screening process eliminates some job applicants. Usually three applicants are interviewed for each hourly employee hired, she said.
“We do a lot of unique things to find employees,” Byrum said. “We camp out at job fairs. We go to churches. We do external and internal job fairs.”
When a new production facility opened in Enid in 2007, 700 new jobs were created. The openings were filled within 18 months.
“We went to four or five other states seeking employees,” Byrum said. “We recruited people from Puerto Rico.”
The company rented an apartment complex to provide transition housing for the new employees.
AdvancePierre retains about 85 percent of the new hires in Enid.
“We really focus on the first 90 days,” Byrum said. “If we can get them to 90 days then we can get them for two years and after two years we pretty much have them.”
The average length of employment is six to seven years.
Products made at the Enid facilities are distributed primarily to retail stores and restaurants.
“Our business here is center-of-the-plate precooked items,” she said.
Products include chicken fingers, chicken strips, burgers and Philly-style steaks.
“We have a bakery division here that makes waffles and pancakes,” she said.
The “Advance” part of what is now AdvancePierre was started in Enid in 1973 by Paul Allen and David McLaughlin. Advance Meat Co. started by providing hamburger patties and breaded beef products to grocers and restaurants from a plant on Maine Street.
In 1992, the company became Advance Food Co., making center-of-the-plate products from beef, pork, lamb and veal and a line of bakery products.
Advance Brands was formed in 2001 to focus on the retail business. Customers include Wal-Mart, Kroger and Albertsons.
Last year, Advance Brands and Advance Food merged with Cincinnati-based Pierre Foods to form AdvancePierre Foods with annual sales of $1.4 billion and 4,000 employees.
The merger combined Pierre’s prepackaged sandwiches and products for vending machines and convenience stores, schools and the military with the products for restaurants and retail stores produced by Advance Food and Advance Brands. In addition to the processing plants and bakery in Enid, AdvancePierre, which is based in Cincinnati, operates processing plants in Ohio and Iowa, sandwich assembly facilities in North Carolina and South Carolina and a bakery in North Carolina.
Last week, AdvancePierre purchased Barber Foods, a food processing company in Portland, Maine. Barber Foods has 670 employees at its food processing plant in Portland. Barber Foods processes more than 300 frozen chicken products that are sold in supermarkets under the Barber Foods brand.
AdvancePierre intends to invest millions of dollars in Barber’s Portland processing plant and use the Barber brand to increase the retail sales of its frozen chicken products, especially on the East Coast and in Canada, company officials said.
“By adding the Barber brand to our existing line of value-added poultry offerings sold under the Fast Fixin’ and Fast Classics trademarks, we have a whole new avenue for retail growth,” Chris Kiser, president of AdvancePierre Foods’ brands division, said in a report from Associated Press.
The Pierre-Advance merger did not change the roles of the processing plants in Enid but is changing the mission at the distribution center.
This summer, the distribution center will start getting products from AdvancePierre’s other processing facilities and the company’s other distribution centers will receive products made in Enid. Customers will be able to order any of the company’s products from any of the distribution centers, Byrum said.
“The truth is the organization is growing,” she said. “We have to continue to grow and do the things that attract people to Enid.”