Around 900 people attend Camden Job Fair

— By TAMMY FRAZIER and

BRADLY GILL

Staff writers

The Camden Job Fair was held Tuesday and the preliminary numbers show that around 900 people attended the event at the SAU Tech campus in East Camden.

According to Ouachita Partnership for Economic Development Executive Director James Lee Silliman, the event was “hugely successful,” and that “all the feedback from businesses and industries was positive.

“They were very pleased.”

OPED Office Manager Dotty Harris told the Camden News that the early numbers show that around 900 people were estimated to have “walked through the doors.” There were 1,288 jobs available through vendors who participated in the event, said Harris.

Applicants from as far away as Missouri and Mississippi attended the Job Fair, she stated, adding that - other than local applicants and the ones from the states listed above - others were from: Bauxite, Cabot, Texarkana, Bluff City, Chidester, Waldo, McNeil, Pine Bluff, Rison, Warren, Calion, Hampton, Thornton, Bearden, Fordyce, Sparkman, Junction City, El Dorado, Magnolia, Prescott, and Hope.

Harris said the information about where the applicants came from was culled by Job Seekers - an online job-search site that job fair organizers used. She stated that many of those who applied for jobs at the fair also learned about the event through social media and local media coverage.

“From the vendors’ standpoint, they were very happy,” said Harris. “I think they enjoyed it and said they had great participation from the job seekers, and that it (the fair) was one of the better ones they’d seen before.”

Jim Thomas attended the fair as an applicant and said: “I guess the best thing I could say was that it was really well run, and all of the hiring companies were very accessible. I was able to talk to all of the companies that I wanted to, and leave resumés or applications with them. I really had a blast being able to help the city tables with the police department, public works, and the fire department. The main thing is that Dottie and Beth had the show running smoothly, and I think that this may end up being the biggest annual job fair in Arkansas.”

Harris said she looked through the Job Seekers survey about the fair and saw that vendors reported they felt the applicants came better prepared for this event as compared to an event held in 2017, and that there were a lot more with “good resumés, a lot more applicants with degrees, and more people seeking specialized skills.”

Harris also stated that she spoke to some of the vendors and they reported that the applicants met all the criteria the companies were looking for, and at least two vendors said their company’s representatives spoke with more than 200 people.

The survey also showed that the rating by vendors regarding the Camden Job Fair averaged “from the Job Seeker’s point of view, around a seven or eight, and from the vendors’ point of view, around nine to 10” on a scale of 1-10, according to Harris. She was asked if the workshops and “Dress for Success” event held prior to the Job Fair played a role in the impressive showing by the applicants. She stated that the attendance at the workshops picked up more as the event drew near, and that she heard several compliments about the “Dress for Success” event held at Greater St. Paul Baptist Church. That program provided clothing for those who planned to attend the Job Fair, but needed ‘interview clothing.’

And the Arkansas Department of Workforce Services buses that were at Tuesday’s event were both full of applicants who applied for jobs online, and for those who needed resumés created, stated Harris.

She also shared that it took teamwork between area economic development entities to host such a successful job fair, and she also thanked the local media for “getting the word out. The thing about it is that it takes everybody’s help to get one of these going and keep it going... With everybody working together it makes a world of difference to get such a great Job Fair going.”

Also, Silliman told the Camden News that this event was the best job fair in which OPED has been involved, and he revealed that there were 62 businesses and industries that had booths at the fair.

He echoed Harris’ statement about the cooperation needed between area entities to produce the Camden Job Fair:

“It took us all working together - Ouachita Partnership for Economic Development, SAU Tech, Camden Area Chamber of Commerce, Arkansas Department of Workforce Services - those were the four sponsors. It’s a team effort and it took all of us working together to pull it off.

“There’s a lot of work - pre-event, behind-the-scenes work. It takes a lot to pull something like this off.”

Camden Area Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Beth Osteen said she felt the event “went extremely well and the feedback from the vendors was really positive. The folks that I talked to personally were very impressed,” she reported, adding that this feedback was from applicants and from vendors. Osteen said that at some point, the organizers might be able to get numbers from vendors about the actual number of people who were hired as a result of Tuesday’s event.

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