The event serves to inform job seekers of what opportunities are out there, said Brionna Cannon, human resources recruiter with Dole Fresh Vegetables.
“There’s a lot of job options that you can go into entry level; you don’t have to have experience, you don’t have to have a degree or certifications to start in them,” Cannon said. “You can get right off the street, apply for the job. It really takes just showing up for the interview and showing interest in getting that position.”
Some employers didn’t have open positions at the fair, but used it as an opportunity to introduce themselves to the community. This included Cascade Corporation, which manufactures forklift attachments.
The company is looking for dependability and is seeing a lot of interest in the manufacturing field, said HR manager Jennifer Spurgin.
Dole has gotten a lot of interest at the job fair the past three years, Cannon said, including high school seniors who attend the event in the morning.
The company, like many others in the area, does a lot of on-the-job training, Cannon said.
“It’s so much better to be able to take somebody out on the floor and show them, ‘This is what we’re doing, this is how you trim down the lettuce, this is how you inspect your lettuce to know what it needs to look like, this is the process it goes through before it even gets to this next group,’” Cannon said. “Being able to tell them what we need, what they need to be doing as they’re doing it really helps a lot.”
Some attendees were prepared for same-day or scheduling interviews and knew in which companies they were interested. Others “shopped around” and learned more about what types of jobs are out there.
Mercy Health saw a lot of interest from high school seniors, touting its recruitment efforts such as tuition reimbursement.
Health care has seen a lot of staffing challenges, but Sharon Slusher, supervisor of nursing professional development and clinical education, said the workforce is rebuilding post-COVID-19.
“We work a lot with our local nursing schools, and the number of students enrolled in nursing programs has doubled since COVID,” she said.
Tory Byers, nurse professional development coordinator, said it used to be common for hospitals to have nursing schools, but “now those have kind of dispersed.” Now, hospitals like Mercy Health have partnerships with schools and other organizations.
While this year saw lower attendance, Summer Garrett, HR manager at McGregor Metals’ Leffel Lane campus, said more people came prepared with resumés.
“Most of our openings that we have are entry level, little to no experience, but where we struggle is people coming to work every day, the attendance and being able to pass drug screens, background checks,” Garrett said.
Bud Downing, co-owner of Express Employment Professionals, said a lot of the manufacturing businesses at the fair were his clients. He said nonskilled jobs are looking for workers to show up and “do a decent job.”
“Turnover is obscene; people change jobs at the drop of a hat for any reason,” Downing said.
Skilled fields are seeing the majority of their workforce approach retirement age without “enough supply in the pipeline,” Downing said. He said the Springfield-Clark Career Tech Center and YouScience programs are helping with this, but the demand is still higher than the supply.
“I think they (the CTC) could teach three or four times the number of skilled trades to people here today and still not meet the demand,” Downing said. “But thank God they’re doing it, because one day the supply will meet the demand again.
Jennifer Belford, senior recruiter at KTH Parts in St. Paris, is working to engage younger people through technical schools. The company manufactures parts for cars — mainly Honda, but also Mazda and Toyota.
“I think that anyone that’s out there in industry is recognizing that need to develop the next workforce,” Belford said.
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