As the speakers introduced the new imaginepittsburgh.com website as the hottest hub for recruiting top-notch skilled workers to Pittsburgh, they all nodded to the PNC Park seats that surrounded the news conference. Organizers at the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, which is launching the site, chose the venue for the invitation-only event because the more than 30,000 seats represent the number of open jobs in our 10-county region.

With Baby Boomers retiring in the coming years and continued economic growth, that number is sure to skyrocket unless the jobs can be matched with workers with the skill set to fill them, in such sectors as manufacturing, retail/hospitality, information technology, energy and finance. The Conference hopes to change that by bringing job seekers, companies and human resource pros together to promote all that Pittsburgh has to offer in employment and high-quality living.

This effort has several high-profile Mt. Lebanon connections. Philip Cynar is the senior communications specialist for the Allegheny Conference. Resident and LeboLife blogger Rekha Shukla is one of the “neighbors” of the website. The neighbors, who are mid-career professionals who acts as ambassadors for the region, spotlight many diverse background and experience levels as a way to show the community nature of our region. And advertising guru Linda Topoleski who works with such large local corporations as St. Clair Hospital, writes for the site, including profiles on many of the neighbors. A story on the Mt. Lebanon connections will run in our September magazine.

“Advance Your Career, Build a Life You’ll Love,” is the slogan of the site, which is divided into three sections: Work, Live and Play. It will list available jobs, one third of which require a college degree and two-thirds of which need some sort of specialized training.

The site also seeks to increase the diversity of Pittsburgh. Eleven percent of our population is minorities, compared to 32 percent of the general population, says Dennis Yablonsky, CEO of the Allegheny Conference.