#5 - What is Business Recruitment, Really (Part 1 of 2)
You've probably driven past it: a cleared lot off one of our highways, a construction fence with a rendering zip-tied to it, maybe just a small sign that reads “Coming Soon.” Ever wonder how that company ended up choosing this particular patch of Catawba County dirt, out of every county in the country that would have loved to land them?
We've covered a lot of ground in this series so far - the basics of what economic development actually is, how local incentives work, why some projects carry a code name instead of a real one. Now we want to turn to the piece most people associate with economic development in the first place: business recruitment. On paper, it's a simple concept. In practice, it's more intricate to carry out - and a fair amount of what people assume about it isn't quite right.
Here's the misconception worth clearing up first: business recruitment tends to get pictured as economic developers going hunting – which we sometimes do, but the honest version is closer to the reverse. Someone is hunting a solution to their business need or problem, and that solution might be us. Let's get into why.
What Is Business Recruitment (BR)?
Nothing mystical here: business recruitment is the process by which we try to bring a new business operation to locate and grow in Catawba County. It's the other half of the two-bucket framework we introduced back in our first post: recruitment on one side, retention and expansion of the businesses already here on the other. We'll cover that side of the house in a whole series of upcoming posts.
Most recruitment opportunities follow a common playbook. Stripped down, it isn't all that different from the process of making a big purchase, like a car. You identify the need, figure out which features matter most, start researching dealers and inventory, compare pricing, whittle it down to two or three finalists, and then work to get the best deal. Business recruitment runs much the same way, except the “dealers” are geographies: counties, states, even countries. And today, tools like the internet and AI research make evaluating a location 2,500 miles away just about as easy as checking out the dealer down the street.
Business recruitment itself usually begins in some unremarkable conference room at Company X - long before we, or anyone else, knows an opportunity exists. These are typically well-established, growing companies based elsewhere in the U.S. or abroad, and something inside that company is starting to push toward change. Maybe it's a major new customer growing their book of business. Maybe it's a shifting tariff landscape, which has been a real factor for a lot of companies in 2025 and 2026. Maybe it's simply the headache of shipping product from a current facility to where their customers actually are. Whatever the driver, it plants a small idea in that conference room: “Maybe we need a new location — but where?” That's the moment business recruitment actually starts, and it starts with them, not us.
Why Does It Matter?
For our loyal ED101 readers (hi, Mom): we covered this in our first post, but it bears repeating. One goal of the EDC's work is to keep diversifying our local economy - more types of eggs, spread across more baskets. If calamity strikes, we might lose a few eggs, or even a basket. But never everything at once. Our area has seen more of that kind of volatility than most, and diversification is one of the more direct ways to hedge against it.
Bringing a new business operation into the county is one of the clearest ways to do that. Sometimes it starts small - a sales or service office meant to establish a foothold. Other times, it's a substantial capital investment, especially if the company already has a proven U.S. market. Either way, that company didn't exist here before, and its arrival adds something real to the mix: a new economic sector, new kinds of jobs, sometimes new technology, occasionally a new international connection without a flag planted here. And their investment adds to the tax base, hopefully lessening the financial burden otherwise bestowed upon every man, woman and child in Catawba County.
What's the EDC's Role in BR?
Strip away the flash, and most of our role in business recruitment is actually just listening. We listen to the company weighing this decision, to what's driving them, and to what worries them most - sometimes that's as basic as this being their first-ever U.S. operation. We listen to their timeline too, and sometimes for clues about who they even are, since that isn't always shared upfront. We're also listening for something else: whether this is a company we even want in our community (clue: not always).
So yes, this can play out something like the car-buying process described above. But the best salespeople don't push you toward a particular option right out of the gate - not at a dealership, and not in economic development. They listen to the customer first.
Once that listening is underway, our role becomes less about selling and more about helping the company navigate real information and get to the best possible analysis: real estate options, utility capacity, whether a community college training program lines up with the talent pipeline they'd need. The list truly can go on and on depending on the features that matter to them. It comes down to knowing this community deeply and knowing how to represent it honestly and well, which takes genuinely loving the place you live and knowing the people in it.
Our office carries more than 100 years of combined economic development experience, all of it built right here in Catawba County. Combine deep local knowledge, real relationships, and a genuine love for this place, and you end up being a formidable competitor against every other community chasing the same company.
What's Next
That's the setup. In Part 2, we'll get into the actual mechanics: who's typically involved in bringing an opportunity to the table, and how the process - we call it “the funnel” - moves from first contact to a final decision. We'll also get into what genuinely matters to a company once they're comparing us against everyone else. Incentives are part of that list, but as those smart ED101 readers already know from our earlier posts, they're rarely the deciding factor people assume.
Got a question about anything in this post, or a topic you'd like to see us tackle in a future one? Send it our way to nhuret@catawbacountync.gov — that's exactly what this series is for.