Career advertising is covered with workweek.

As the old saying goes, you might be able to take the boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy. And as many employers can relate, this is good news for Saskatchewan's economy. Indeed employees with a rural background have a well-deserved reputation for an industrious work ethic and loyalty. With Saskatchewan's population primarily coming from rural areas (that is, those who do not call Saskatoon or Regina home) this bodes well for employers who are looking to add to their workforce.

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Certainly it bodes well for workweek, a creation of the Saskatchewan Weekly Newspapers Association that, for the past two-and-a-half years, has provided career advertising across its membership. Much of the SWNA membership, now 86-strong, comes from rural Saskatchewan, which for the sake of argument is described by SWNA as everything outside of the province's two major centres, Regina and Saskatoon.

More than 285,000 copies of workweek are delivered each week, reaching a marketplace containing the majority of Saskatchewan's population. In the most recent competitive media readership survey, conducted by ComBase Media Study updated 2005, 83 per cent of respondents indicated they had read the last issue of their community newspaper. Comparatively, only 27 per cent said they had read the last issue of a daily newspaper.

These figures pack a heavy punch, and they're the genesis of workweek. About four years ago the a formentioned cross media readership study was undertaken by the community newspaper industry across the country. It was a $4.5-million study, of which Saskatchewan SWNA publishers collectively paid about $1 million. A huge undertaking, this represented the first time that a readership or reach study had been completed.

"This was the sole reason why we started the career section," says Steve Nixon, executive director of the Saskatchewan Weekly Newspapers Association. "The industry never had its own figures. We knew that our papers were reaching everybody in our towns, our smaller cities, and our rural areas. We know this because for instance an editor or a publisher in one of our papers walks out his front door and he knows just about everybody on the main street. You've annoyed every single one of them at least once and they've told you so."

On a national scale, a lot of the business being conducted for career advertising has been accomplished via national advertising agencies. They're used to looking at NadBank, a well-established and well-accepted readership study done for daily newspapers. Meanwhile the community newspapers were armed with only their dazzling proposals and smiling faces.

"We had no numbers, so basically we were walking into an agency or we were walking into government and we were telling them we were really well-read, and we're a great bunch of people" Nixon says. "But at the end of the day it just wasn't enough. So we created this study. It took a lot of time, a lot of effort and a lot of convincing to get the industry to finally say 'OK, we've got to cough up some money.'"

"This study was mirrored off the Nad-Bank models, so the data would match daily readership data," Nixon continues. "The difference, however, is that ComBase is a cross-media study. Therefore, it measured dailies, community newspapers, radio and television at a local level. It was the largest study of its kind anywhere in North America and believed to be in the world. It was a very comprehensive study and it won an award because of it."

What came out of this study was that Saskatchewan's community newspapers had an 83 per cent reach. That is to say, on average, community newspapers were reaching into their markets by 83 per cent. Armed with this knowledge, SWNA went about their work in establishing a product for their membership, readership and employers.

Once they finalized the product, their next challenge consisted of standardization. How do you standardize an industry that varies its paper sizes from five column widths to eight column widths, and has everything from 174 agate lines to 305 agate lines? In other words, a page is not a page to all members.

Because each SWNA paper works with their own business model for their own market, it became difficult to say that a certain standard must be met in order to house the new product. SWNA has managed to come up with three ad sizes which are available across the board and as such, about 70 per cent of the circulation provided by SWNA members incorporates workweek into the body of their own paper.

Nixon says workweek posts a wide range of jobs for basically two types of job seekers. The first is the aggressive job seeker, who actively seeks employment at its first opportunity. Meanwhile the passive job seeker is someone who is content with what they do, although they wouldn't turn down the right opportunity when it arises.

"It's my experience that most people are passive job seekers," Nixon says. "There aren't a lot of people looking for jobs here, but that doesn't mean that they won't move to another job. But this isn't to us about jobs, it's about rural, small-city, small-town Saskatchewan."

"There's a value there and the reason why we have broken all trends in Canada and probably in North America where we have more people residing outside the two major centres than in them, is because people have value in those areas," Nixon continues. "Our small towns over the last 30 years have had a huge exodus out of those towns; it has killed many, many towns. But now, there is opportunity. There is new business; there is new hope. The people, as they always were, are worth something."

SWNA members continually tell Nixon that there are many people coming back from Alberta. They are working in all industries but this scenario is particularly true in the oil and gas industry. But there is potential across all sectors of the Saskatchewan economy, and that's what makes this SWNA venture and these times so exciting.

"Now the oil and gas people can do their work here, the Weyburn/Estevan area is perfect for that," Nixon says. "The potash mines are expanding, more workers will be needed there. There's work in the uranium mines, and base metal industry. A lot of them are farm kids. They still have some attachment to the farm but farming is not their full-time job. That's a big tradition here."

"The whole thing is really around mindset," he continues. "Our community newspapers are very, very powerful. Eighty-three per cent reach is enormous. It's the highest in Canada for community newspapers. And in comparison to other mediums--daily newspaper, radio and television, it's unmatched. Reaching nearly 300,000 homes every week, it's a good product with huge potential."

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Nixon points to the ties that bind, particularly with family members who remain on the farm or in the hometown, as being particularly beneficial for his product. He notes there was one instance in the Wey-burn area where 10 jobs were posted by one company in workweek. Of the 50 resumes that came into that company, nearly all of them came from Alberta, where workweek is not available. Hence, a concerned sibling, parent or grandparent brought the job posting to the attention of the ex-pat, in an effort to get them to come back home.

If this trend continues, not only will it prove workweek a success, perhaps it will also prove that it's no easy task to take the boy out of the country after all.