It's a warm Thursday morning and about 160 high school students fill a large auditorium at the Trego County Fairgrounds in WaKeeney, Kansas. They're here to learn about employment and education opportunities close to home. This event was organized by an organization called Western Kansas Career Showcases.
"Write this down!" the group's founder, Joe Coles, implores the assembled students. "In the first three to thirty seconds you meet someone, they form their opinion of you. And if you give them a negative first impression—write it down!—it takes twenty more positive encounters to change their mind." The students are scribbling furiously in their notebooks. Coles also gives them lessons on how to listen ("With your eyes!") and how to take notes ("The world's smartest people all take notes!"). It's not hard to see that Joe Coles has also done a little preaching in his life.
Scattered around the edges of the auditorium are tables staffed by about two dozen local businesses eager to recruit new help: farm equipment dealers, construction companies, health care organizations. Local colleges are represented too. After Joe Coles' pep talk, the students are broken up into small groups and each group takes turns visiting each table. Each visit lasts just fifteen minutes. It's kind of like speed dating—but for jobs.
At one table, Afton Huck is extolling the virtues of the company she works for, American Implement, an authorized John Deere dealership with fifteen locations in western Kansas and eastern Colorado. Huck says the company offers an on-the-job training program for diesel technicians who can maintain and repair John Deere equipment.
"It's hard for us to find students who want to get their hands dirty and it's a physical job," Huck says. "It's hard work and so this event in particular helps us get in front of students in a quick and efficient way that we otherwise wouldn't connect with."
Huck says it's important to let high schoolers know about opportunities close to home, which is exactly what Western Kansas Career Showcases does. This year it will hold events like this in eleven towns, attended, Joe Coles says, by more than 1,500 students. After fifteen minutes, Coles tells the students it's time for them to move on to the next table—and reminds them to say "Thank you" before they go.
Coles is a native of Cimarron, Kansas, population 2,000. After 40 years in education, he founded Western Kansas Career Showcases for one simple reason: to keep small towns in western Kansas from getting smaller. "You can't have businesses if you don't have customers, you can't have schools if you don't have students, and it's pretty simple that we are all getting smaller out here," he explains. "And if you keep doing what you're doing, you get the same results."
Coles says he was disheartened to see towns in Western Kansas getting smaller and smaller, watching their high school football teams shrink from 11-man, to 8-man, to 6-man. By connecting young people with employers, he is determined to reverse a trend that to many seems irreversible: "Our hashtag is #StartHereStayHere," he says. "We feel like, if we can find a rural Kansas kid and keep them in rural Kansas, we have a better opportunity to keep them longer, rather than bringing somebody in that's not used to rural areas."
The high schoolers listen patiently—for the most part—as each business makes its pitch. After lunch they can pick four businesses to go back to and learn more. One of the students here is Lillian Garcia, a high school senior. She's planning to go away to college in Nebraska. She says most of her friends are also planning to leave. "I think people want to get a different experience," she explains. "Because we've been here most of our whole lives so everybody just kind of wants to move and find new friends and then come back every so often."
It's stories like Lillian's that show Joe Coles has his work cut out for him. But it's work he'll keep doing.
This report is part of the Kansas Public Radio series, Rural Kansas Rising: Tech, Talent, and Tomorrow's Jobs. Funding for the series was provided by the Kansas Department of Commerce Office of Rural Prosperity.
Copyright 2026 Kansas Public Radio
