Job fairs part of nationwide effort to find work for those who served
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Patrick Paquin has two college degrees and more than 20 years of experience with the Air Force and Navy.
What he doesn’t have is a job.
“I’m one step from declaring bankruptcy,” the 47-year-old Columbus veteran said. “I’m not asking to be rich.”
Paquin and many veterans nationwide are looking for work, and business and veterans organizations have launched initiatives to help them.
One of the latest efforts came at a veterans job fair in Columbus yesterday, organized by RecruitMilitary, a veteran-centered employment firm. More than 300 veterans and their families met with the 50 businesses and schools at the Huntington Club Room at Ohio Stadium. It’s the third such event the firm has hosted in Columbus the past three years.
Kroger, State Farm, Waste Management and Quicken Loans were among the companies represented, along with educational institutions including DeVry University and Ohio Northern University.
Companies and veterans alike hoped to match skills with job openings.
“We’ve had a good group of people come through, lots of different skill sets,” said Dwayne Ackley, a recruiting specialist with Columbus-based Mission Essential Personnel, which was looking to fill up to eight positions in Columbus.
Most jobs available at the fair were mid-level and some entry-level, including technical, maintenance and management jobs, said John Lundberg, director of events for RecruitMilitary.
Waste Management has 1,000 openings companywide in North America, including 33 in Ohio. Available positions included mechanics, truck drivers and managers, said Wes Reel, a manager of specialty staffing with the company. Waste Management has hired an average of 46 veterans each month in 2012, up from 30 per month in 2011.
The past few years have been tough for anyone looking for a job, but veterans have been a special focus of late. Last year, President Barack Obama challenged the private sector to hire or train 100,000 veterans or their spouses by the end of 2013. The National Chamber Foundation, a charitable affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, has worked with RecruitMilitary and other organizations on a more ambitious initiative: 500,000 veterans hired by 2014.
“Folks see that folks have volunteered to put themselves in harm’s way, and they want to give them an opportunity to get connected with (a job),” said Lundberg, who was a Marine for 20 years.
The initiatives seem to be paying off for veterans.
Hiring Our Heroes — the chamber initiative — has resulted in jobs for at least 10,400 veterans since its start in March 2011, said Bryan Goettel, communication director for Hiring Our Heroes. The hires, tracked by company surveys, have come by training sessions and hundreds of jobs fairs. He said companies have made commitments to hire more than 160,000 veterans so far.
Last month, veterans’ unemployment nationwide fell to 6.9 percent from 7.4?percent in June and 8.6 percent a year ago, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but those numbers aren’t seasonally adjusted. In Ohio, veterans’ unemployment was 6 percent in the second quarter this year.
Still, many veterans struggle to match the skills and experience they’ve gained in the military to civilian occupations.
“It’s an educational process to find out what kind of skill set they have,” Lundberg said. “It’s knowing where to go and articulate what they did.”
Paquin, one of the veterans at yesterday’s job fair, knows what he can do. Set to retire from the Air Force reserves in October, he had been stationed at Youngstown working as an airplane-engine mechanic. With degrees in English and industrial design, he said he can make graphics and has branded himself as a technical writer.
But in the past three years he’s looked for work, he’s only been able to land temporary jobs for parts of one year.
Paquin said despite his years in the military, employers say he lacks work experience.
“It used to be if you had the education and were hard-working, you had the job,” he said. “Now, they’ve upped the ante ... you need two, three, five, 10 years of experience.”
Other veterans said they never learned the skills necessary to compete for a job in the civilian world.
“I’m 28, and I’d never been to a job interview,” Adam Sharp said at the fair yesterday. He’s a Zanesville veteran who served with the Navy for nine years.
Lundberg said about 100 veterans are hired on average after each of their job fairs, so there is hope for the veterans who attended.
“Don’t hire a veteran to be patriotic,” he said. “Do it because they’re good people.”
jkanclerz@dispatch.com
