The Crookston City Hall announced that it hired Jordan Bergquist as its new Human Resources Coordinator in June and has moved him into the public sector of the City Hall building. This is a new position that the city adopted and put Bergquist in charge of multiple important tasks for the city, such as recruitment and employee payroll.
Bergquist is a longtime resident of Crookston who attended the University of Minnesota Crookston to major in Business Administration before moving to the Twin Cities to finish his degree at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and find his first job. However, he soon returned to his hometown after he heard of the open position at City Hall. “I’m no stranger to the area. I lived here back in 2013 when I attended UMC, where I studied Business Administration,” Crookston Human Resources Coordinator Jordan Bergquist explained. “I moved down to the Twin Cities to finish my degree at the U of M and accept a role as the Human Resources Director over in the Twin Cities area for Wal-Mart while I finished my degree. I love the area, I love living in Crookston, and I have family in the area, so when I saw there was an opening with the City of Crookston, it was a very easy decision for me to apply and take this position.”
Bergquist has spent the first three months of the job getting to understand City Hall and taking over the payroll system from the City Accountant. He has been working with the City’s Department heads to advise any planning and organizational structure, recruitment, and career advancement to facilitate the city’s recruitment policies and fill any open spots remaining in City Hall.
While Bergquist did work as a Human Resources Director in the Twin Cities before returning to Crookston, he has noted that being a Coordinator for the city does have some significant differences from his experiences at Wal-Mart, mainly that he has to do much more with the city’s hiring infrastructure with a much smaller team to help him in handling certain aspects of hiring. “It’s a change of pace. There’s a whole new set of rules for the Public Sector that I had to learn on the job here. City Administrator “Corky,” Reynolds, Kathy, and Ryan have been huge helps in getting my handle on that. With Wal-Mart, one of the biggest retailers and number one employer in the nation, I had an entire infrastructure,” Jordan Bergquist explained. “I had a payroll team and a benefits team that handled those for me, so being hands-on with our payroll and benefits system and being the point of contact in charge of both of those, not having that corporate infrastructure behind me, has been a huge change of pace but I like it. The city’s been wonderful for my development and my career here, so this is a great learning opportunity for me.”
Bergquist revealed that he and the city are working to create a more automated and modernized payroll system or looking for a better streamline option to get more efficient results for the city and its employees.
During his time as the Human Resources Coordinator, Bergquist has worked to fill in a couple of crucial positions within the city. Most notably, the Community Development Director, Kari Kirschbaum, Crookston Fire Chief Shane Heldstab, and a new IT Technician working under Director Chad Palm. However, he has noted that the search is still difficult thanks to the aftereffects of the COVID-19 pandemic. “The job market has been difficult in this area for the last six to ten years, where originally, I started in recruitment over in Grand Forks. I’m no stranger to the smaller town/rural recruitment strategy. Particularly, the pandemic really reset the job market,” Jordan Bergquist explained. “People are looking at compensation, benefits packages, and remote work, so it’s across the board, not just one department or this area. Even down in the Twin Cities, when I was working for one of the biggest companies in the world, there’s been difficulties. So I think getting those positions filled has been a priority since I got here in June, but I’m not someone who likes just to slide people into roles. I will conduct a thousand interviews until we find the right fit, so finding someone who is a right fit for the positions and the city has been a huge priority for me.”
