Looking for work: Job fair draws hundreds - Bloomington Pantagraph
BLOOMINGTON — Before Tuesday, Daniel Lesemann never had been to a job fair.
But last week, he'd received official notice that he likely would be out of work by Nov. 30. The Normal resident is one of about 1,200 employees affected by the planned shutdown of the Mitsubishi Motors North America auto plant in Normal.
"I've had a couple of job offers, but they were from out of state," he said Tuesday after visiting withe representatives of Norfolk Southern Corp. during the 2015 Pantagraph Job Expo at the Interstate Center in Bloomington. "I'm just kind of looking so I have something to go to."
The expo attracted about 1,000 job-seekers with the opportunity to visit with 38 vendors from Central Illinois.
"I think there was a real need for this expo," said Linda Connelly, the newspaper's inside classified sales manager. "With Mitsubishi closing, it's a good time to have this because I believe that some of the companies here are targeting those employees."
Jeff Viccone, a Norfolk-Southern freight car repairman, said the job fair is a way to get the company's name out to the public and recruit new employees.
"We go to job fairs and talk about our jobs," he said. "There are a lot of different positions available and job fairs provide us with an opportunity to meet some people and give them some information about some of the things we do."
Angie Stauffer, a production manager from Camtek Inc., a circuit assembly and manufacturing company in Bloomington, said the firm is always looking for good help.
"We're looking for people with strong backgrounds in technology," she said. "We get busier in the fall and the spring because we have a lot of clients in agriculture."
Lori Kollmorgen, the human resource manager at Hog Slat, a construction firm based in North Carolina that specializes in construction for hog and poultry farms, hoped to find some future employees from Central Illinois.
"We have careers and need a wide variety of people," she said. "We need construction workers, sales representatives, service technicians, supervisors and general laborers. We train, and with many of our jobs, there is some travel involved and there are a lot of people that really enjoy that."
Atkins Irwin of Carlock walked away from the expo with at least one scheduled interview. Jill Kelm of Steak 'n Shake set up a time to meet with him after visiting with him at the restaurant's booth.
"I just graduated from college with a degree in arc welding and in culinary and so many college graduates never work in the field their degree is in," he said. "I don't want that to be me, so I am getting my resume out to everyone and I am going to work hard to get the career I want."
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