If you are a nurse looking for a job in Kansas, you shouldn’t have trouble finding one.

Jobs for registered nurses were consistently reported as having the most openings in the state, according to the second quarter 2008 Kansas Job Vacancy Survey released this week by the Kansas Department of Labor.

Job vacancies were highest in education and health services, as well as the trade, transportation and utilities industries, the survey found.

Among major occupational groups in northeast Kansas, which included Douglas County, the most vacancies were found in sales-related jobs (1,404) and office and administrative support (1,136). They were followed by demand for health care practitioners and food preparation and servers.

The need for sales people didn’t surprise Shirley Martin-Smith, owner of Martin-Smith Personnel Services, an Adecco franchise. Firms are especially on the lookout for good sales people during a “soft economy” that exists now, Martin-Smith said.

“They are looking for people who can do business development and relationship building, and not everybody likes that,” Martin-Smith said. “It’s selling intangibles; concepts. There is no refrigerator or widget. That’s the hardest type of selling there is.”

Administrative support and customer service positions are also challenging to fill, Martin-Smith said. Employees have to be able to work in team settings and have solid computer skills for entering data and working on spread sheets, she said.

The Lawrence Workforce Center serves a wide variety of employers. It recently conducted job fairs for firms looking for help in customer service and manufacturing.

“We had a good response,” said Cheryl White, supervisor at the center, 2540 Iowa.

The companies were very successful at filling the customer service positions, White said. Several candidates were interested in the manufacturing positions, but they fell short of the company’s needs, she said.

Because of an aging population, health care workers and especially nurses will probably always be in demand, Martin-Smith said.

Lawrence Memorial-Hospital, however, doesn’t have a shortage of nurses, a spokeswoman said.

The state survey can be found online at the Web site for the Kansas Department of Labor.