Annual Job Fair Helps Local Students Get Hired

The students filling the yesterday had one thing on their minds: jobs. 

The center’s ninth annual student job fair took place from 3:30 to 6:30 p.m. Thursday for the eight school districts it serves.  The center serves as a career technical high school, but it also provides a number of adult education services and helps connect all students in the eight districts, including Brecksville-Broadview Heights, with career education and opportunities. 

Students filed into the building throughout the afternoon and evening to fill out applications and speak with employers about summer and part-time jobs and volunteer opportunities. Since students don’t have to register in advance for the fair, Donna Hessel, a career pathways specialist at the center, said it was difficult to know how many were in attendance. But in past years, she said between 700 and 800 students showed up to apply for jobs. And nearly 40 local employers set up tables in the center’s cafeteria on Thursday, from fast food companies to lawn care services to amusement parks. 

Some companies, like Metropolitan Pools, have been coming back to the fair year after year. Peggy Buck, the service’s director of human resources, said the company has been attending for the past five or six years. They are always looking for lifeguards in the area, she said, and the company will typically hire between 300 and 400 lifeguards throughout the summer. 

“We usually get some pretty good kids from this one,” Buck said. She added that the students at the Cuyahoga Valley Career Center’s fair are usually well prepared with resumes and other materials. 

ARAMARK is another company that has been attending the fair for years. Concessions manager Kristy Papson also said that the students at this fair are well prepared, and that the company typically hires 50 percent of its 80 to 100 local summer staff members from the center’s job fair. Those employees work in the concessions at the Cleveland Metroparks. 

The fair is designed to connect employers with those well prepared students. Each table was color coded by age group, so students knew before they approached a table if they met the minimum requirement. After picking up an application, students could retire to one of the many tables set up around the room and lining the center’s hallways to fill it out. They could also use a computer room to fill out online applications. Many students took advantage of at least one of these options, with some students opting to sit on the floor, penning in their information, after the tables filled up. 

Hessel said this fair is a good opportunity for students to meet a lot of employers at once who are actually looking to hire. By the middle of the fair, she said she had already heard from a handful of students who had been hired on the spot.