Tinley Park Career Fair Draws Hundreds Seeking Jobs
TINLEY PARK, Ill. (CBS) -- About 200 to 300 job seekers showed up for a career fair in Tinley Park on Monday.
As WBBM Newsradio's John Cody reports, there was a lot of hope at the Holiday Inn at 185th Street and Harlem Avenue in Tinley at National Career Fairs' job fair on Monday, but not a lot of action.
Antoinette and Amber said they looked around, but left no résumés with the companies hiring at the job fair. Antoinette said she didn't see what she sought.
"I was looking like, mainly … health care services, or daycare, or hair stylists," she said.
LISTEN: WBBM Newsradio's John Cody reports
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Michelle, who had 15 years of accounting experience, said she has been on a job hunt for three years.
"There's a lot of people trying to recruit for schools, to attend their schools. So, yeah, that leads to a job, but if you're in immediate need of a job, it doesn't really help too much," she said.
For Herbert, it's been another three-year hunt. He worked for 17 years with Bank of America, until mergers left him out of a job.
About half of the job seekers at the career fair wore suits and other business attire. Others wore jeans or slacks as they lined up to hand in résumés and tour the 15 booths, including three schools offering training.
There were also three insurance companies seeking commissioned agents.
Actually providing paying jobs, Michael Knight at Remote Access Technology said he's getting résumés from folks who want office work, which is not where his people work.
Knight said workers at his company are more likely to be at the "end of a rope, 500 feet in the air, maybe doing a repair on a smokestack or something like that. Or down … crawling in a confined space inside of an industrial boiler, cleaning coke off the walls and doing welding repairs."
An informal survey of 10 people leaving the job fair found those looking for jobs thought the economy is improving, just not necessarily for them.
