Three businesspeople who live and breathe employee recruitment and retention offered insights at the Times Record’s first Business Breakfast Forum. The event, held May 15 at TechPlace, examined the challenges and offered strategies for successful hiring in a county where unemployment rates are often well below 3 percent.

Sharing their expertise were: Tom Rainey, executive director of Maine Center for Entrepreneurs; Cynthia Murphy of Workforce Solutions at CEI; and Andrea Georgian, HR director of SaviLinx. The forum was moderated by Press Herald Business Editor Carol Coultas.

Among tips and takeaways:

• There are 85,000 people in Maine not in the workforce. You may only need one or two. But to get them off the sidelines you have to be willing to be creative and flexible with job descriptions and work environs.
• Talk to your customers for recommendations on prospective hires. A wide range of people who might not be top of mind for a vacancy such as retirees or immigrants could be a good match with some accommodations.
• A fair and engaging workplace is just as important as salary and benefits. People thrive where their opinion is respected. Murphy recommends managers meet with employees for a few minutes every other week to ask what’s going well and if they have suggestions on how to improve business. They often do.
• Make your “About Us” page really personal so that it reflects your values. People want to work for other people – not companies — with similar values.
• Emphasize Maine’s quality of life when recruiting out of state, but avoid using phrases like “from away,” which divides a workforce.