Job fair gathers together employers, job seekers

More than 60 employers filled the Kenai Peninsula Job and Career Fair on Wednesday to meet with job seekers and one another.

Sara Bieber, Gulf Coast regional manager for the State Department of Labor and Workforce Development, said the job fair is part of the Kenai Peninsula Job Center’s central objective — connecting people to jobs.

At the fair, she said, that can take a lot of forms. Some people may have entered, connected with an employer, and will turn that into a new job. Others connected with training resources or job center services that will help them chase their ambitions. It’s made easier by gathering the employers, resources and services in the same space, in person.

“Everybody coming in here is probably looking for employment, and there are friendly faces waiting for them,” Bieber said. “We’ll have people from this job fair, whether it’s an employer or a job seeker, tell us ‘I connected with somebody.”

That face-to-face opportunity, Job Center Supervisor Jason Warfle said, is important to the fair and makes it distinct from other parts of the job-seeking experience. When so much is online, he said, the opportunities to meet someone and make an in-person connection and first impression are rare.

“That face-to-face has kind of been missing for a lot of people,” he said.

Represented at the fair on Wednesday were a variety of industries, including energy, construction, law enforcement, different branches of the military, retail, hospitality and more. With such a wide gathering, Warfle said, the center hopes people can find the right matchups to move into the workforce.

An additional benefit of the fair is bringing people into the job center and the resources it provides, which people might not already be aware of. The job center, Bieber said, is a “one-stop shop” of resources for job seekers. There are workshops for resume writing and interviewing, grant funding available to help people pay for training like a commercial driver’s license course, and others.

For more information, visit jobs.alaska.gov/jobfairs or call 907-335-3010.

Reach reporter Jake Dye at jacob.dye@peninsulaclarion.com.