What kind of marketing promotion does it take to persuade an advertising professional to return to Iowa?

Something as simple as the follow-up postcards sent by the Iowa Careers Consortium definitely helped, said Chris Eggert, who was among the first job seekers to register to use the consortium’s Web site when it was launched in 1998.

“I was in the mindset of coming back anyway,” said Eggert, who moved to Ames from Minneapolis, and today is still with the same agency, Innova Ideas & Services. “It helped me to make that decision to come back because they were proactive.”

More than 22,000 job seekers from around the country are currently registered to receive notification of newly posted jobs on consortium’s Web site, www.smartcareermove.com, a 9 percent increase from a year ago. Additionally, the number of resumes posted on the Web site, 966, is up 35 percent from a year ago, according to data provided by the Iowa Department of Economic Development.

The consortium also conducts recruiting visits to major cities such as Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, to meet with former Iowans and try to sell them on the advantages of returning.

“Although it’s very challenging to track, the ICC has documented over 5,500 people who have utilized the services and been influenced by the marketing and recruitment efforts of the consortium and are now working in Iowa,” said Kay Snyder, an IDED senior marketing manager and coordinator for the program.

Those numbers impressed Eggert, an Iowa State University graduate.

“I think that’s fantastic,” he said. “I hope they’re investing every dollar they can into online sources, because that’s where it’s at. … Being a young professional in the state, it’s critical that there be one resource for Iowa jobs, and if this is that resource, I think, ‘Spare no expense, and make it the best it can be.’”

Created to meet the state’s increasing need for highly-skilled employees, the Iowa Careers Consortium is a public-private partnership between the IDED, Iowa Workforce Development and businesses, professional associations, educational institutions and community development organizations.

The ICC will receive $275,709 in state funding in fiscal year 2006. It also receives on average about $250,000 annually through its business and community members, which are also the primary funding source for the SmartCareerMove Web site, Snyder said.

Initially, the consortium focused on trying to bring former Iowa professionals back to the state by inviting them to alumni receptions. That focus has since broadened, however, to include an emphasis on diversity, by participating in national diversity career fairs. This year, consortium representatives have attended events around the country held by groups such as the Society of Women Engineers, the National Black Data Processors Association, Women for Hire and the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers.

It was a mid-July NAACP recruiting event in Milwaukee that enabled job candidate Michael Lee and a human resources representative from Nationwide Agribusiness Insurancer Co. from Des Moines to connect.

“As soon as (Nationwide’s HR representative) got back in she contacted me and gave me a list of jobs,” said Lee, who by late August started with the company as an underwriter. “It was a very quick process as soon as the interview process got going.”

Lee said his biggest motivator for choosing Des Moines was to live in the same city as his girlfriend and end expensive weekend trips from Wisconsin.

“Granted, it wasn’t Des Moines that attracted me, but it’s been a great experience being here,” Lee said. “I really don’t have any complaints.”

The ICC’s programs continue to evolve. One initiative the consortium plans to begin soon is a referral network to help the spouses of candidates find employment as well, said Brian Bowman, chairman of the ICC and employment manager for Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc.

In another program planned for next summer, the consortium will assist Iowa companies that conduct summer internships in hosting an end-of-summer gathering for the interns and the companies that sponsored them, Bowman said.

“It’s creative things like that where I find the real value in the consortium,” Bowman said. And as an HR professional, “it’s a good group to network with as well, to collaborate on different events we may not be able to do as a single company.”

Lori Hodges, director of human resources for The Integer Group in Des Moines, said her company has posted all of its open positions on the SmartCareerMove Web site for about the past five years.

“It’s been great,” she said. “We get responses for most every position we post. A few years ago, we hired an employee who found us directly through the Web site, and it was a former Iowan who wanted to return home. So it met its target audience.”

One recent transplant, Sean Martinie, said he had never heard of the SmartCareerMove Web site before he and his wife decided to move to Des Moines from Charlotte, N.C.

“If I had known about (the Web site), I certainly would have gone and checked it out,” said Martinie, who landed a position as a product manager at Kemin Nutrisurance Inc. through a headhunter.

Martinie said other Web-based job search tools proved fruitless for him, however. “The number of interviews or callbacks for all the job ads I had responded to or resumes posted was exactly zero,” he said.

He and his wife, Brianne, are excited about Greater Des Moines and Urbandale, where they’ve just found a house to buy. “I’ve lived in some larger cities, Charlotte and Atlanta,” he said. “I’m quite ready to get to a smaller-sized city, but with still some of the conveniences I enjoyed in larger cities.