MoDOT promotes open positions amid staffing shortage

By Harry Loomis

Like many organizations, the Missouri Department of Transportation has been struggling to find workers.

MoDOT hosted a job fair at its northwest district office Wednesday, and promoted positions to fill across the state.

“We’re looking for pretty much all positions because we are low on all positions,” said Jose Rodriguez, engineer at MoDOT. “Whether that be maintenance or construction or that would be your office staff, human resources or those types of jobs.”

The northwest district will hold another job fair in April.

“We’re looking to hire those as soon as possible at all of our hiring events,” Rodriguez said “We’re actually doing on-site interviews for people and try to get people on board as quickly as possible.”

The district is looking to fill around 20 positions in various areas. As the number of workers remains low, the available employees find more work on their plate.

“Some things we have to maybe put off for and a couple of extra weeks because we don’t have the employees to staff a full maintenance crew,” Rodriguez said. “We end up not being able to get as much done as we’d like to.”

As MoDOT looks to fill these positions, they have been working with local contractors and street crews where needed.

“We work together quite a bit to try to help maybe coordinate like the different work zones that are going on,” Rodriguez said. “If there’s something that we can do as far as timing our traffic signal a little bit differently to help traffic get through for on a city street, then we can help out that way. Just little details like that.”