RITZVILLE — A pair of career showcases this month will let Adams County high school students see what future they may have in their own backyard.  

“I want to show our students that you can stay in the area and have the jobs that you've always thought you wanted, or expose you to jobs you didn't know existed, or just motivate all of our students to see there's more opportunity out there than I think we all realize,” said Adams County Development Council Director Kyle Niehenke. “Even in a small community, there's more jobs out there.” 

The showcases will be held at Lind-Ritzville High School on Oct. 9 and at Othello High School on Oct. 16. The event at Lind-Ritzville will be two and a half hours, from 9 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.; the Othello High School event, having more students to serve, will rotate grades in and out from just before 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Students from Washtucna, Sprague, Odessa and Harrington high schools are also invited to the Lind-Ritzville showcase, Niehenke said. 

Each student is given a passport, a sheet of paper with their information on one side and a list of exhibitors on the other, Niehenke said. Every time a student has a conversation with a potential employer, they get a stamp on the passport. Those passports are turned in at the end of the event and entered into drawings for raffle prizes. 

Niehenke has 36 vendors lined up for Lind-Ritzville, and another 50-plus for Othello, he said. About 350 students take part in the showcase at Lind-Ritzville, and about 1,400 in Othello. 

Adams County is a mostly agricultural county of about 21,000 people, which presents challenges when it comes to maintaining a stable workforce, Niehenke said. 

“If you’re (reacting) to your workforce, you’re going to be behind your competition,” he said. “(We need) proactive attempts at (building the) workforce, especially in a small community, where you can have maybe some long-term plans. Some of our vendors (say), ‘I'm not hiring right now, but I know I'm going to have some gaps in two, three, four years.’ It's casting a wide net; if I can inspire 10 of those kids and five of them ultimately come back to us interested in a couple years, that goes a long way to making sure that (companies) have their workforce needs (met) for the future.” 

The benefit goes both ways, said Lind-Ritzville High School principal Kevin Terris. 

“Students (leave) this showcase with many opportunities that they (weren’t) aware of when they started their day,” Terris said. “They get face-to-face with people who are going to possibly be on the other end of a hiring committee. They get to know the names and faces of people that they're interested in working for in the future. It also gives them a really great exposure to a lot of the opportunities that Adams County offers.” 

Niehenke went to high school in Ephrata, he said, and when he was in school, things were very different. 

“We just didn’t do this,” he said. “Everyone just said ‘Go to college and figure it out.’ (That’s) a really expensive way to figure out (whether a particular career path is for them) …  (We can) expose our employers to potential workforce candidates, and have a pipeline established of future workers, because retirements are not slowing down, and we need people to backfill those jobs.” 

    Students talk with a recruiter at Lind-Ritzville High School last year at the Career Showcase. This year’s event at LRHS is Oct. 9.
  

    The career showcase features enough potential employers that the gym won’t hold them all, said Lind-Ritzville Principal Kevin Terris, and the event extends into the parking lot.
  

    Most of the vendors recruiting at the Adams County Development Council Career Showcase offer snacks or swag at their booths, to grab students’ attention and keep their name in front of the students.