Chamba launched a bilingual app in April 2020 that connects Spanish-speaking workers with the employers who need them. In late July, Chamba narrowed its focus to the restaurant industry. That seems like good timing if you’ve been paying attention to the restaurant staffing woes and how hard it’s been to find people, especially for jobs busing tables, in the kitchen and other nontipped “back-of-the-house” work.
But Montemayor has a different perspective.
“There’s not a labor shortage. There’s a connectivity problem,” said Montemayor, Chamba’s co-founder and CEO. “And that’s what we’re solving here. We’re connecting restaurants to the talent that wants these kinds of jobs.”
Employers, he said, are “looking for talent in the same talent pool. They have not diversified where they search for talent and are looking in the same, common places.”
A number of companies are already promoting Chamba’s service on the app’s site, including Brothers BBQ. Within two days of using the app, the Aaron Nelsen, the general manager for two of the Denver-based chain’s locations, arranged three interviews and made a hire. “We picked the best candidate out of those three interviews,” he said in a video testimony on Chamba’s site. The Spanish-speaking employee started work the next day.
Sometimes a shift in perspective can reveal an underlying problem rather than a symptom of that problem.
Here is the headline package that caught my eye initially:
Why the maker of a Denver-based job app says there isn’t a restaurant labor shortage
Restaurants say it’s been hard to find workers, especially busers and for nontipped back-of-the-house jobs
That opening line is provocative and I wanted to know more. The deck (in italics) presents the "common wisdom" that the story means to challenge.
No one app will change the employment dynamics of a giant nation but the thinking behind the app is important. What if we are not tackling the true problem, and what if we are agonizing over something that could be improved with some creativity and ingenuity? The CEO of Chamba would claim that the employment problem is rooted in employers not communicating with the potential workers who might become valuable employees.
I know I need to think more deeply about why some of my writing students seem to have so much trouble. I could blame earlier teachers or family issues or whatever, but the job of education is to take people from wherever they are and move them forward. The blame is not important (though you could argue that better writing instruction in elementary school would pay off down the road).
One thing I know is that many writing students simply HATE to go back and proofread their work. They know how to spell and punctuate... but they just didn't make the time to reread. That doesn't make them poor writers.
They just don't care enough to find a little extra time.
That is something I can work on, though I admit I don't have any easy answers.
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