Almost 800 people attended the 2014 Career Days job fair, which hosted representatives from 50 different employers.

The numbers are in from this year’s Career Days, and they show what many at the college and in the community already knew: Clark College’s week-long program for job-hunters is growing stronger every year. This year, more than 1000 job-seekers attended one or more Career Days events, which included workshops, clinics, job and transfer fairs, panel discussions, and expert presentations.

As always, events began before the official April 21 – 24 run of Career Days with the opening of the Career Clothing Closet the Thursday and Friday of the week before. This year, more than 200 students received free interview outfits of gently worn professional clothing donated by members of the community.

Officially, however, Career Days kicked off on Monday, April 21, with an employer panel featuring representative from Adidas, The Boeing Company, and Madden Industrial. The Ellis Dunn Community Room in Gaiser Hall was filled with students and guests ready for tips on what these employers were looking for. One key need: skilled technicians in fields like machining, welding, and carpentry. “There’s a shortage here in the Portland area,” said Randy Shelton of Madden Industrial.

Visitors at the 2014 Career Days job fair had a chance to speak directly with representatives from employers in the region.

Michael Lushenko of Boeing agreed. “There’s a shortage of people who know how to make parts,” he said. “Our engineers tend to have at least a bachelor’s degree, but machining is an area where we are happy to look at people with two-year degrees.”

Lushenko cautioned that the job market has become more competitive recently, in part because of the increasing popularity of the Pacific Northwest as a place where people from other parts of the country would like to move. “I’ve been hiring for 15 years,” he said. “It used to be a I got a lot of local residents applying. Now I’m getting a lot of applicants from the East Coast and the South.”

Fortunately, Career Days offered local job-hunters many opportunities to gain an edge over other competitors. One popular presenter was Bobby Castaneda, director of business development at the Vancouver-based ACS Professional Staffing. “He was a participant on our employer panel last year,” said Career Services Program Specialist Sarah Weinberger, who chaired the Career Days committee. “Attendees enjoyed his role on the panel, so we brought him back this year to present his own workshop.”

Attendees also flocked to hear Joshua Waldman, author of Job Searching with Social Media for Dummies. The biggest draw of the program, however, remained the job fair, held April 23. Nearly 800 job-seekers attended the event, which for the second year in a row was at full capacity with 50 employers represented; employers included Boeing, Columbia Machine, C-Tran, EarthLink, and Evergreen School District 112. The fair also included a photo booth where job-hunters could get a professional photo taken to use on their LinkedIn profiles. This feature was back for the second year in a row, as was the Penguin Passport, an incentive for visitors to attend multiple events. Passport prizes this year included an iPad Mini, a Fit Bit Flex, free pizza for a year from Papa Murphy’s, and gift baskets from local companies.

Vancouver resident Patti James stands in the Career Center after receiving advice on her resume during Career Days 2014.

The program also included a drop-in resume clinic, during which job-seekers could have their resumes reviewed by trained human-resources professionals. Anne-Marie Rupert, a human resources professional who is currently a stay-at-home mother, was one volunteer reviewing resumes at the clinic. She said one of the key mistakes many job-seekers made was not understanding how much experience they actually have.

“What I’ve realized is that their resumes are brief, but what they’ve actually accomplished is impressive,” she said. “So helping them to get their accomplishments on paper has been the key thing I’ve been doing.”

Patti James, a Certified Nursing Assistant who was looking to change careers, said she came to Career Days specifically for help with her resume. “I haven’t done a resume for so long,” said the mother of five. “I was in my last job for 19 years.”

James said she had a completely new resume after speaking with Rupert. “She actually helped me to create a resume with the right keywords,” she said. “I didn’t realize you could create a resume that talked exactly about the skills an employer was looking for. And she made me realize I had more experience than I thought.”

While the majority of Career Days attendees are Clark College students, the college hosts the program as a service for anyone in the community who could use help in finding a job. James, who lives in Vancouver, is not a student; she saw an ad for the event on Craigslist and decided to visit.

“I think it’s wonderful that they have this event for all of us who are looking for work,” she said. “I was scared they’d throw me out when I said I wasn’t a student. I said, ‘I’m nobody, can I still be here?’

“Instead they just laughed and said, ‘You’re somebody! Come on in!'”

Photos: Clark College/Jenny Shadley

Clark College hosts numerous job fairs at its main campus each year, all of them open to the public.

Clark College hosts its second annual Summer Job and Internship Fair from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. on Tuesday, March 4, in the Gaiser Student Center. The event is designed to help job-seekers find summer internship and employment opportunities with Portland- and Vancouver-area employers.

New this year, the college is partnering with the Vancouver Housing Authority (VHA) to co-sponsor the fair. According to VHA Community Involvement and Employment Manager Bridgette Farnbulleh, the VHA has organized its own summer job fair for the past two years, but was eager to join forces with the Clark College.

Clark College’s job fairs draw dozens of employers and hundreds of job-seekers.

“We wanted to connect with Clark College because of the educational aspect,” Farnbulleh said. “We wanted our youth to be on a college campus, and to understand that the kind of job you get is closely connected to the education you get. We’re trying to break the cycle, to make sure that just because they may have grown up in poverty doesn’t mean they have to live in second-generation poverty themselves.”

“I’m looking forward to this year’s job fair,” said Sarah Weinberger, Employer Relations and Job Developer at Clark College. “We have already doubled the number of registered employers from last year, and the collaboration with the VHA will make our event even stronger. Previously, the Summer Job and Internship Fair was held in May, but many employers had already hired for a June start date by that point. We are now holding the event in March because it’s when students need to start planning for summer employment.”

Positions offered at the fair may be full-time, part-time and in the case of internships, they may be paid or unpaid. There will also be a mock interview room set up to help job seekers prepare for real-life interviews.

The Summer Job & Internship Fair is sponsored by Clark College Career Services and the Vancouver Housing Authority. The event’s Gold Level sponsor is LaborWorks. Some of the employers who will be at the event are Boys & Girls Club of Southwest Washington, Entercom Portland, Firestone Pacific Foods, LOWE’S, Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge, Trackers Earth, and YWCA Clark County. There are over 30 registered employers currently, with room for more. The event is open to any company or organization offering internships or summer employment, but space is limited so interested employers should act quickly to register.

A list of participating employers is available on the Career Center’s Pinterest page.

The event  is free and open to the public. Clark College is located at 1933 Fort Vancouver Way, Vancouver, Wash. Driving directions and parking maps are available at www.clark.edu/maps.

If you need accommodation due to a disability in order to fully participate in this event, you should contact Clark College’s Disability Support Services Office at 360-992-2314 or 360-991-0901 (VP), or visit Gaiser Hall room 137, as soon as possible.

Elizabeth Christopher contributed to this article.

Photos: Clark College archives/Jenny Shadley

Roger Hinshaw, Bank of America’s president in Oregon and Southwest Washington, and Monique Barton, senior VP of corporate social responsibility, at the bank’s offices in Portland. In July, they presented a $15,000 gift for Clark College’s Volunteer & Service-Learning program.

Bank of America has donated $15,000 to Clark College’s Volunteer & Service-Learning program to prepare more than 1,000 students with valuable on-the-job training. The funding will assist with community partnerships and program expenses.

The Volunteer & Service-Learning program places students in more than 100 community nonprofits and governmental organizations, including American Red Cross, Boys and Girls Clubs, Columbia Springs, Habitat Store, and Hazel Dell Community Garden. Students receive experience that promotes their personal growth and contributes to their understanding of course material.

For example, Clark students have volunteered to build homes with Evergreen Habitat for Humanity; students taking Spanish have read bilingual versions of children’s books at local elementary schools as a service-learning component of their classes. These experiences not only enrich the students’ education, they can give students the real-world work experience that can lead to paying jobs.

The Bank of America grant will boost the resources for such major events as Career Days, which needs more than 100 volunteers to operate successfully. It will also allow the program to offer more service-learning opportunities; elevate awareness of career- and service-learning; and finalize new relationships with local businesses. Additionally, Bank of America employees will volunteer their own time to participate in Career Days and to educate students about personal finance.

Clark College President Robert K. Knight said the college’s primary goal is to improve the rate of post-secondary completion. “As a result of the alignment with Bank of America, Clark anticipates students will receive high-quality work history experiences—particularly for students with little or no previous work experience—through service learning and community engagement experiences, and opportunities for civic and community engagement, career exploration, life and soft-skill development,” he said.

“Providing grants to local nonprofit organizations that support career readiness is part of Bank of America’s broader effort to help create economically vibrant communities,” said Roger Hinshaw, Bank of America’s president in Oregon and Southwest Washington. “As part of that, we’re proud to support Clark College’s Career Service-Learning Program, which helps prepare college students to enter the workforce and, in turn, support our local economy.”

Clark’s Career Services department, which oversees the Volunteer & Service-Learning program, has a history of aligning college classroom learning with current community needs; promoting personal growth of college students through reflection about self, society and the future; combining experiential with academic instruction to focus on critical thinking and civic responsibility; and organizing on- and off-campus events that provide quality service opportunities for Clark College students, faculty and staff.