Over 600 candidates attend Houston job fair

Last week we hosted our first job fair of the calendar year in Houston, TX. This was our third show in Houston in the last three years, so we have grown accustomed to the venue and so have the recurrent exhibitors. On this occasion, we had the opportunity to unite almost 650 candidates with over 20 diversity minded exhibitors and professional organizations. Employers including Aflac, Black & Decker, BP, The Scotts Company, City of Houston Health Services, Universal Weather & Aviation, La Michoacana Meat Markets and many more were all taking part in on site interviews and greeting candidates.

As we do more events, I’m pleasantly surprised to see the affluence of well prepared, professional bilingual candidates. This has triggered us to setup private interview areas in the locations where we have additional space, and I’ve seen them being used a lot by exhibiting companies. I met with many of the recruiters after the job fair ended, and they were all exhausted from the large amount of traffic they received. Nonetheless, very pleased with the quality of candidates and they were taking their potential hires’ information back to headquarters for further review and possible follow up interviews.

I’d like to mention that many candidates ask why they must drop off a copy of their resume at the registration desk – the answer is simple, it’s for the benefit of each candidate. We compile a digital database with these resumes, and this database is sent to each exhibiting company, so it’s a good idea to leave a copy with us.

So I’m pleased to say that we started our 2009 series with the right foot and a successful event, both for candidates and recruiters, and we will now turn our full attention to our second stop in our job fair calendar: Chicago on March 19.