Job fairs are a big component of Goodwill’s Job Connection program — the Columbia Willamette branch of Goodwill Industries hosted more than 1,300 fairs in Oregon and Southwest Washington in 2018. The company’s latest job fair, held Wednesday in the Andresen/St. Johns neighborhood, was a bit different from most of the others because it was aimed exclusively at job seekers above the age of 50. It was Goodwill’s third “50-plus” job fair, public relations manager Dale Emmanuel said, with the goal of helping older job seekers overcome some of the roadblocks they might encounter.
The physical setup looked a lot like any other job fair, with company representatives organized at tables around a central meeting room at the Seventh Day Adventist Community Church on St. Johns Road. Job seekers worked their way around the room, networking and learning about the opportunities. (While the job fair was held in a church, Goodwill is not religiously affiliated.)
But there were a few differences. Many job seekers had concerns about mobility and high-impact work. And there was a greater emphasis on how to modernize the job search and brush up on technology.
“Of course, age discrimination is against the law, but it happens,” Emmanuel said.
Down the hall from the main employer area, Goodwill educational specialist Tom Nuzzi led a series of classes with advice about how to approach job hunting and job interviews in the digital age, with class topics such as “modernizing your résumé” and “how to interview with a millennial.”
“It’s more about technology and how they have to put applications in now,” said Maggie Mashia, Job Connection program manager.
One of the things to focus on is speed, Nuzzi said in one class. Assume a résumé will only hold a reader’s attention for six seconds, and put the most relevant information at the top. That means objective summaries are out, and relevant skills and abilities are in.
In another class, Nuzzi discussed the use of the internet and smartphones for networking and job applications, as well as some advice on digital presentation, such as avoiding email services such as Yahoo and AOL that can be perceived as dated.
“Use Gmail for business,” he suggested.
The job market has changed substantially in the decades since many attendees entered the workforce, Emmanuel said, but employers are still looking for maturity, experience and knowledge. And a lot of older job seekers, she added, don’t realize how many skills they’ve acquired, or how to correctly present them.
An estimated 110 job seekers attended the 3 ½-hour job fair, meeting with representatives from 15 employers including C-Tran, SAS Retail Services and Charter-Spectrum, as well as agencies, such as Partners in Careers, that offer advice or work to connect companies with qualified applicants.
“I learned about a lot of companies I’ve never heard of, and training possibilities that I didn’t think they’d have,” said attendee Diane Broide.
All of the employers are actively looking to hire, Emmanual said, and many came with the expectation of receiving job applications and potentially even making contingent offers the same day. In some cases, the companies were seeking older job seekers for their maturity and flexibility.
“It’s a part-time position, so for a lot of retired folks they think this is a good fit,” said Tasha Allen, who represented the school bus driver agency First Student.
Matia Carlson, from the security guard agency Securitas, said high mobility work can sometimes be a challenge for older job seekers, but that shouldn’t deter them from applying because there are a wide range of positions and duties available.
“We try to work around it as much as possible,” she said. “Some of our best officers are 70 years old, and they’re workaholics.”
Piper Ryan, representing the janitorial and maintenance company Millennium Building Services, noted that the company’s jobs tend to be a good fit for the older workers who rely on public transit.
“A lot of our positions are right off transit routes,” she said.
Many of the job seekers said they found out about the fair through the Job Connection program. Attendee Mary Miller said she’d come to look for clerical, accounting or cashier work, and ended up finding more opportunities than she expected.
“(There were) several companies that were looking for just what I need,” she said.
According to Scott Bailey, the state’s Southwest Washington regional economist, there were about 8,000 Clark County jobs held by people above the age of 65 as of 2017, plus 24,000 held by people age 55 to 64 and 31,000 held by people age 45 to 54. Clark County’s unemployment rate was last reported at 5.3 percent in April, though Bailey said unemployment data broken down by age group isn’t available at the county level.
He speculated the unemployment rate for older people could reflect, in part, a tendency among companies to try to fill open positions with younger employees who can be paid a lower salary.
That trend was visible during the Great Recession, he noted — far more of the people who lost their jobs were young, but the older workers who were laid off tended to have a much harder time finding a job again.
