Making connections was one of the goals of the HireKosciusko Hiring Fair at Zimmer Biomet Center Lake Pavilion Thursday.
Allyn Decker, vice presidents of operations and engagement at OrthoWorx, said Thursday’s event was the first of three job fairs sponsored by OrthoWorx scheduled in 2024. The others are scheduled in May and October.
Decker said in his previous role at Ivy Tech, he was director of community engagement and Ivy Tech did something like Thursday’s job fair in April. “The response was so good that we felt we needed to do it again, but more than a one-off. So that’s why we planned a series of these,” he said.
This is the first year OrthoWorx has planned job fairs like the one Thursday.
For the job fair, he said it may have to be at a bigger venue, though.
“We’ve been overwhelmed with walk-ins. Far more than we expected,” Decker said. There were 109 preregisters before the cutoff with some more people preregistering after the cutoff.
Decker said an estimated 100 to 125 people were expected to show up, but “we’ll probably be closer to 200 once we tally everything up.”
Amaris Ackermann, marketing and communications manager at OrthoWorx, said via email the event had 231 attendees.
Decker said the number of people who showed up at the job fair shows there’s a need in the community.
“Well, our community has gone through some layoffs in the last couple of months. Three large organizations have laid off large numbers of people” and some people are coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic after being furloughed.
Thursday’s job fair was in partnership with the Kosciusko Economic Development Corporation, Kosciusko County Community Foundation, Kosciusko Chamber of Commerce, Kosciusko Human Resources Association and WorkOne.
Decker said the job fair was about making connections.
“It’s more than just exploring career interests, but we actually hope some second interview offers are made today. We hope some job offers were made today. So we’re hoping that people get some employment opportunities out of this,” he said.
Decker said he thinks the job fair was an opportunity for organizations to meet a large number of people at one time as well.
OrthoWorx facilitated the match-ups for anyone who preregistered for the job fair. When people preregistered, they filled out a profile and uploaded their resume, so employers were encouraged to research all those before the job fair and contact people to make appointments for Thursday.
Organizations at the job fair were 80/20 LLC, ARCH Medical Solutions, Avalign Technologies, Applied Innovation, Bowen Center, Creighton Brothers LLC, Grace Village Retirement Community, Micropulse, Maple Leaf Farms, Parkview Health, Spherion Staffing, Polywood LLC, Warsaw Adult Education, Wildman Business Group and Zimmer Biomet.
Latasha Fintcher, with Parkview Health, said Parkview Health has a lot of openings in clinical and non-clinical positions, so they’d like to get people with “great talent” for Parkview, in Warsaw and other Parkview locations. Parkview hopes to bring new talent to the team.
Diana Clark, coordinator with Warsaw Adult Education, said WAE was at the job fair to offer free ELL classes for anyone who needs those as they come to interview at the job fair.
“Our main goal recently is to partner with other businesses to provide free training for them like in logistics, or welding” or recovery coach training, Clark said.
Clark said WAE also possibly found some ELL teachers by being at the job fair.
Clark said she hopes some of WAE’s graduates and ELL students are at the fair and find good careers due to it, as well as WAE making connections with other businesses.
Silvia Duenas, with Zimmer Biomet, said Zimmer Biomet’s goal is to attract talent to the Warsaw community and making sure “we continue to keep our jobs here.” One of the benefits of the job fair is for companies and people to meet in person.
Melinda Russell, Grace Village Retirement Community, said the benefit of the job fair is to bring people and businesses together and helps businesses find people they need to fill positions. Grace Village participated in the job fair because they have job openings - like nurses, CNAs, QMAs and housekeeping - and it’s hard to fill those positions in this economy, so they wanted to meet people who are looking for a job.
In a job fair like Thursday’s, Russell said they’re probably seeing people she probably wouldn’t normally connect with, so it’s helping to bring people together that wouldn’t normally come together.