Marketing yourself
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If you rely on the Internet to help you get the best bargain, you’d be right at home in the 21st century job market.
Tuesday, dozens of employers, including Johnson & Johnson, were directing applicants to fill out online applications at The Commercial Appeal’s May job fair, saving them the cost of printed materials and creating an immediate database of potential employees, complete with current addresses and names presumably spelled right.
"From this job fair, we’ll be scheduling June interviews," said Allison Rittenhouse-Rodgers, who was in Memphis for the day with a handful of other J & J human resource folks to marshal the crowd the company created with a help-wanted ad in Sunday’s paper.
"We told people we had jobs and to come to the job fair," she said.
By midmorning, 1,500 people had signed in at the job fair at Agricenter International. About a tenth of them were in a line snaking around corners at the J & J booth, including aunt-niece team Mary Luster and Tiffany Luster.
Because they represent different generations, their needs are slightly different.
Tiffany Luster, 18, is transferring to the University of Memphis, principally to accommodate her job search in Memphis.
Mary Luster works from 10:30 p.m. to 4 a.m. at the FedEx hub. She’s looking for daytime work.
Both are hopeful.
J & J needs 150 workers — half again its current staff — trained and on the job by Sept. 1 for an expansion at its logistics center on Holmes Road.
"We’re expanding the lines of four of our biggest companies," said Rittenhouse-Rodgers.
"We get more quality applicants at a job fair than though ads. It worked last time; we hope it will this time too."
When applicants get to J & J’s recruiting Web site, they’ll create their own profiles, complete with resume attachment.
Once they are in the system and assigned a password, they’re able to scan job postings and receive e-mail when jobs open that match their profiles.
The same thing was going on all across the fair, which the newspaper offers to employers that advertise jobs in the classified section.
The openings will be posted on the newspaper’s Virtual Job Fair at commercialappeal.com for 30 days.
"And we also post their listings on Careerbuilder.com, which gives them national exposure," said Kris Snoke.
"It’s all part of the package.
But if you think the entire job hunt is conducted in virtual space, ask Larry Hitt, who spent the day lining up people for onsite drug tests at The Peabody’s booth.
The Peabody had openings in 14 job categories — about standard, Hitt said — from banquet servers to engineering dispatchers.
Within 90 minutes, 25 people had completed the saliva-based drug test.
And Tracie Taylor, who’s looking for work in counseling or social work, could have spent the morning e-mailing resumes. She came instead, because "I want to meet the people, and I want them to meet me."
She wore a finely pressed yellow linen suit as part of her "stand out in a crowd" strategy.
"These people behind the tables see hundreds of people. I want to be remembered."
Taylor did get noticed, said Cheryl Talley, director of human behavior health services at Delta Medical Center, as she thumbed through her resume.
"People who have nicely prepared resumes are most likely to get callbacks," she said.
"But tell people how important a firm handshake is," she said, imitating the wet fish she’s often offered, mostly by female applicants.