Well it seems like the weather on the Cape has switched over to springish weather which means its time to start thinking about spring cleaning.  Honestly the winter has flown by, and with it the winter ice on the ponds which means no more skating except at the rink which is a totally different atmosphere.  If you get a chance skating on a pond is a highly recommended activity.

Wellfleet like many towns on Cape Cod faces an acute labor shortage in the summer months and it would be impossible for local business to meet the demand for services without importing a fairly significant amount of help.  Like many other businesses in the area we fill a large amount of this need through J1 exchange students.  Every year we here a number of these students.  The process itself requires a lot of work every year from us.  We have to review a large amount of applications and try to assemble a group of people who we think will get along with each other well, keeping in mind historical amnesties while at the same time we try to assemble the most diverse group possible to hopefully provide a rewarding experience for everyone involved and that’s the easy part.  Its necessary for us to have students with staggered arrival and departure dates so that we are able to acclimatize them with the area and  to help them settle in.  The number of students that we higher is based upon our ability to secure housing for everyone something that’s always a challenge considering the local housing market.  This all has to happen in the winter months, honestly we would higher even more students but housing that we consider to be good is a major limiting factor.  Basically we try to set everything up to try to make sure that everyone has a good experience.

2010 is knocking on the doorstep, it seems just like yesterday we were celebrating the start of the new millennium and here we are days away from being a decade in. Those ten years things have certainly changed for business and the cape is no exception.  Truthfully all the technology has provided us with a wide array of solutions or aids to our business.  We have real time GPS tracking devices installed in our vehicles which prove a great tool to keep track of our crews and are also utilized to verify time spent at a location.  The vehicles are also equipped with a separate GPS system to aid our drivers in navigation, and are especially useful for our linen delivery operations.   Our website has changed from being fairly basic to one that creates an alternative method of contacting us and allowing for linen orders to be placed online and soon will have a fully functioning shopping cart system to create a more flexible way for us to offer linens to our customers.  The Internet has become increasingly important to our operations for everything from conversations with our clients, to payroll, to lead generation.   Now we’re left to wonder what the next decade will bring.

Cape Cod is a unique place that can be challenging for local businesses to operate in.  One those characteristics is even more exaggerated on the Outer Cape.  Between mid June and early September the majority of the area’s economic activity takes place; the winter, by contrast, is quiet with a brief uptick during the holidays and then it gets really slow in January and February.  To make it even more challenging the labor market is skewed in the opposite direction: in the winter there are quite a few people who are looking for work and there are few jobs available, while in the summer there is an acute labor shortage.  The result is that many local businesses with sizable seasonal staffing needs are forced to look elsewhere to fill their positions.  For example, our staff balloons from 6 year round staff members to twenty five or so in the summer season.  In order to fill all of these positions we and many other local businesses have to import students from other countries.  That means that there are hundreds of foreign students in each town on the Cape, all of whom need to be housed by their employers.  The availability of labor is in fact the main limitation of our operational growth in the summer.

There is a lot of work involved in recruiting and preparing for the foreign students.  We review hundreds of applicants each winter trying to make sure that they are compatible for both us, the local area, and with each other.  We provide housing for all of the students that we sponsor, something that is quite difficult in the local housing market.  We have been sponsoring these students for years!  It is always interesting to watch the mix of cultures and to see the Cape and America through their eyes