An estimated 7,000 people flooded into a federal jobs fair in Fredericksburg on Monday, causing long wait times and leave an additional 1,000 people standing in line when the job fair closed at 4 p.m.
Virginia Sen. Mark Warner said Monday afternoon that he would work with federal agencies to hold another job fair in the region in the coming weeks.
“This unanticipated demand says a lot about the state of our economy,” Warner, who attended the job fair, said in a statement. “I heard story after story from folks who never expected to see their lives turned upside down by unemployment.”
About 3,000 people had signed up for the job fair at the end of last week, Warner said, and about 5,000 people had signed up by Sunday night.
Problem with this is that they told those folks that went to the job fair that they had to apply for a Federal job online. They stood in that line and wasted time. No recruiter is going to remember all those 4,000+ folks that showed up no matter how dazzling they were. And, what’s worst is that when you apply for a Federal job online (it’s hit or miss)...you may never get a call for an interview (or even a job offer). Why? Because the people that are actually getting hired for these jobs are really personal friends and family members of the selecting officials or they are internal applicants. This is the “workin’ the network” part of the job search. And, that means it’s already a closed shop. This is nothing new…it’s been like this forever. I believe that job fairs are held during these times to take a count of the official unemployment numbers (like a head count or something) and that’s why they set these up.
--JC
Mar. 8, 2010 at 11:07 PM