Business View Civil and Municipal | March 2021

30 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL MARCH 2021 like Taylor, Continental, and some of the others, so that when the kids are coming up through 11th and 12th grade, they are already starting to experience some of that vocational work. On top of that, our community college works closely with our industry, as well. All of our businesses in the industrial park and Continental are able to basically customize their workforce needs into what the different schools can provide them.” Clinton is also home to Mississippi College, which recently had its electrical engineering program accredited. The private college of 5,000 students has one of the highest medical school acceptance rates in the state. “Not only do they provide the workforce that is needed for the businesses here in the area, in the city, our industrial park, Continental, but also throughout the state,” says Prado. The city is always looking for innovative ways to operate and attract new businesses. They recently beat out other cities nationwide to become the site of the upcoming Lifetime movie Teacher Watching. And with the COVID-19 pandemic hitting the world last year, they knew they had to try even harder to bring in new opportunities. Prado admits, “We had a decision to make – either to stop or innovate, and we decided to innovate. That’s when I brought in the idea of using virtual reality for both recruitment and workforce development. In recruitment, we have a 750,000-square-foot building that we’re working to get occupied, so we took that building and placed it into virtual reality. In other words, if you were to put on that headset anywhere in the country, you could see what the building looks like once it was fixed to the potential prospect. We took those headsets and sent them all around the U.S., including technology companies in Silicon Valley, all throughout the West Coast and the Seattle area.” For workforce development, they started a pilot program in the city’s high schools to help augment education. “Gabriel arranged a demonstration of it with about half a dozen of us