The Successes from the Job Fair

By Ellen Grimm on Sunday, April 26, 2009.

Another major job fair is in the works for New Hampshire.

This time organizers promise they'll be prepared

Earlier this month, the job fair at Southern NH University in Manchester attracted thousands of job seekers.

The unexpected crowd overwhelmed organizers forcing doors to close early.

Although some attendees were frustrated by what they saw as a lack of preparation, others were lucky enough to find jobs.

NHPR Correspondent Ellen Grimm reports.

STORY:
Thirty-five-year-old Nicole Trombly lost her marketing job more than a year ago.

The manufacturing company she worked for laid off 28 people, about one fifth of the work force.

Trombly says she tries to stay upbeat, but with more than 45 thousand people unemployed in the state, the job market is tough.

Still, she made some contacts at that job fair earlier this month and they’re starting to pay off.

TROMBLY: I've had some really good success and have actually had a phone interview and had a face-to-face interview this week that went really really well. And that's in marketing, so I'm hoping that comes through but continuing to move forward in all directions to keep my options open just in case it doesn't come through.

Steve Boucher is with the state Department of Resources and Economic Development.

DRED co-sponsored job fair along with several state agencies and WMUR TV.

He acknowledges a lot of people were disappointed they didn’t get in last time, but overall he says, the job fair was successful.

BOUCHER: Out of the 150 companies that were represented there, so far we've heard from 44 of those companies, and they've hired 319 people.

Deanna Clougherty is project manager for ChoiceLynx, a web development and services company.

Clougherty said they collected more than 100 resumes for about five positions.

CLOUGHERTY: We did hire one candidate based on the resume we received at the fair. And we're at the point now that we're looking through the other candidates to still assess whether we have matches and such.

Other companies are still sorting through resumes.

Gregg Flegal of Edward Jones said the investment company is looking for financial advisors.

He said they talked with a few hundred people at the fair.

FLEGAL: We came away with probably I would say 20 very serious candidates, very qualified candidates from that initial contact looking at their resumes. We were very pleased with it.

And David Gray of BAE Systems says the company has about 250 positions across the northeast, mostly in engineering.

Gray said they collected about 400 resumes at the fair.

So far, only one person has been in for an interview.

Gray: We have this pile of resumes that we basically sorted by disclipline. It's the first rough chop and now the recruiting team -- there's six of us here -- we need to go through and look at them in more detail and marry them up to our openings for potential opportunities.

Organizers meanwhile are working to pin down a location for the next job fair which they hope to hold toward the end of summer.

Steve Boucher, with the Department of Resources and Economic Development says organizers learned from experience.

They’re planning for better parking and transportation and for a facility what will accommodate 10,000 people.

For NHPR News in Manchester, I'm EG.