Posted: November 11, 2011

On Tuesday, Regent University President Carlos Campo will announce a plan that aims to create jobs for Hampton Roads’ unemployed.

The Plus 1 Jobs Initiative isn’t a new concept but the Virginia Beach university hopes it will catch on in the region, as it did in Indiana, Washington, D.C., and Atlanta. Each of these localities launched programs earlier this year that encouraged businesses to hire the unemployed.

This time, the effort will be led by students, in particular members of Regent’s Students In Free Enterprise or SIFE Team. The goal of the project is to gain 10,000 new jobs in the region over six months.

On Nov. 15, the initiative will be announced as part of the Regent SIFE Team Global Entrepreneurship Week.

The event will be held at 1 p.m. at the DoubleTree Hotel at 1900 Pavilion Drive in Virginia Beach.

The focus of this year’s GEW will be small businesses. There will be workshops on selling global, online and improving marketing strategies, to name a few.

Gregory Stone, a professor of marketing at Regent’s School of Global Leadership & Entrepreneurship, said the SIFE Team students have been at the helm of the Plus 1 Job Initiative.

"One initiative was to work on the first-ever career fair at Regent," said Stone of the students’ ideas. Midway through the six-month campaign, the university will host the career fair on Feb. 13, where entrepreneurs and small businesses can look for their "plus 1" employee – or hopefully more.

Small businesses, with five or fewer employees, will command a high level of attention during the project. They often need guidance hiring new employees and are pivotal in improving the economy, Stone said.

"We like that idea, because what we saw among entrepreneurs and small businesses, is a lot of them have the ability to grow and expand – but they need to bring on a part-time to full-time employee," Stone said.

At the Regent job fair, there will be workshops to answer commonplace concerns, like how to get a payroll started for new employees.

"We will take on pledges [from businesses] that want to hire. We don’t care if it’s part-time or full-time. We don’t care if it’s job sharing," Stone said. "We want small businesses to look for ways to expand their business by bringing on another employee.

"There’s a lot of businesses sitting out there, with a kind of wait-and-see attitude when it comes to how they are going to expand."

Often the added expense of a new employee, or employees, can be enough to make or break a small business, he said.

Two news anchors at the Indianapolis Fox affiliate WXIN launched its "Add One Job" campaign on television this September.

Lee Rosenthal, news director for WXIN Fox 59, said the idea was to let businesses know that everyone can do something about the employment crisis. "We were all just thinking and talking, and looking at the economic challenges," he said. Then they had an idea. "What would happen if every business just added one job? Would it make a difference? And the answer is yes."

While it may not be feasible for every business to add a job, it would certainly be feasible for each business to try, he said.

Fox 59 led by example and added one full-time job – a creative services director.

"Since we’ve done it, more than 200 businesses have pledged to do it. And some have added more than one job. If you are waiting on the government to improve the situation, it’s probably not going to happen. But if you want to rally, and do something about it, find a way to do something," he said.

By Danielle Walker