Video: 80 Jobs Coming to Smithville

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SMITHVILLE, Miss. (WCBI) — Dozens of jobs are coming to Smithville nearly three years after an EF-5 tornado tore through the area.

“To get jobs back in your community after a disaster is a huge, huge upswing in the amount of time it takes you to recover,” said Smithville Mayor Gregg Kennedy.

Motion furniture manufacturing company Behold Home has already started hiring its plant managers, and will hire 80 people over the next three years.

“This felt like home,” said Behold Home CEO Lyle Harris. “We felt there was a need here, an under served labor market, a good, capable labor market. We felt like we could pull from the surrounding counties, as well as west Alabama. This town needs us, and we need them.”

Harris says the company started moving into a vacant building last month, and residents are happy to have them in town.

“I can’t tell you the number – in the tens – that have come by and said, ‘Hey, when you’re open, we’re ready to work. We worked here. We need a good, stable working environment,'” Harris said.

“It gets people who are needing a job back to work, and it’s great for our town, and it’s great that we’ll have people coming back into town now to go to work,” Kennedy said. “If they stop somewhere in town and spend and buy a Coca Cola, that’s more than what we had.”

Harris says Smithville is the best fit.

Residents there can take on a challenge, after going through so much.

“Business is tough, and this town has been battle tested after surviving as well as it did after the EF-5 tornado, so they know what it takes to bounce back after a difficult event,” Harris said.

Behold Home hopes to start production in mid-June.

Harris says those interested in applying for the jobs can go through the WIN Job Center in Amory.

He says they’ll start posting the jobs in the next couple of weeks.