THUNDER BAY — Jorja Hosegood spent about two hours exploring the booths at the Opportunities Northwest Job Fair on Thursday.
“I'm here looking for a job to pursue in operating heavy equipment and talking to different mining companies,” said Hosegood.
Hosegood was only one of the roughly 2,000 people event consultant Nancy Milani expected to see for the fourth annual event, which is put on by Dougall Media.
“It's been great… we're trying to help solve problems for employers that are looking for employees and we're bringing them all here together,” said Milani.
The fair has grow, with 18 more booths this year and had representation from almost 100 employers looking to hire across the region from Sault Saint Marie to Winnipeg, including many local businesses.
Milani said she believes the fair had a cross-section of employers from nearly all sectors offering full-time, summer, part-time and contract jobs.
“We've had many people of different sort of roles coming looking for employment for us, but also our vendors working on our site as well and really representing all of us that are working towards the Great Bear project and collecting that information and bringing it to our team, but also to theirs,” said Mac Potter external relations manager for Kinross Great Bear.
“We have a very exciting project that we've made substantial progress on and we really want to see those who are interested in employment and speak to those (about) what kind of opportunities they're looking for and how we can build that forward,” said Potter.
Potter added they were very excited by some of the candidates they’ve seen, talked to and to really help build a project for Northwestern Ontario, for Red Lake, Ear Falls and their Indigenous partners.
“It's a great opportunity to talk to the neighbours and those who are working on-site, but also Thunder Bay is a hub from an economic development sense, an employment hub for all projects in the Northwest, and it's a really great opportunity to see everybody,” said Potter.
Donovan Crosson, a Pic River Development Corporation (PRDC) IT technician, ran a stall for the non-profit alongside several other Biigtigong Nishnaabeg businesses. The First Nation is booming he said, and they came to the fair to spread the word that they have tons of jobs.
“I think we met a… huge, diverse type of people from highly qualified to just starting out. A lot of people that were kind of in school and were looking for potential careers in the future. Yeah, for us, there's a lot of potential new workers just because we do so much things,” said Crosson.
“We’re actually looking for a van driver to transport some workers from the airport back to Marathon, kind of a cross shift, but PRDC, we do just about everything from construction working (to) bussing,” said Crosson.
“It's exciting,” Crosson said. They have participated in smaller career fairs before, but he added “nothing this big.”
Both Potter and Crosson said they plan to return to the job fair next year.
With several these businesses returning, the fair also added about 18 booths this year.
