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Some two dozen island high-technology business have high hopes that a free technology job fair to be held late Thursday at Punahou School will catch Hawaii college students graduates who are home for the holidays and show then they can come home and get good jobs. High-tech fair seeks
isle connections
http://www.htdc.org
By Russ Lynch
Star-BulletinPut together by a state agency, the High Technology Development Corp., the fair is a follow-up to a technology job fair that HTDC and some isle companies and nonprofits staged in San Jose, Calif., on Oct. 1, which already has resulted in some recruitment.
"Twenty companies went from Hawaii and there were a bunch of recruits," said a spokeswoman for HTDC, Vicky Chiu-Irion. "There was no charge for the companies. They just had to be there. It was, in the companies' eyes, very successful," she said.
There is a demand for qualified applicants for a surge of new jobs in the developing high-technology sector and employers are spending big money on "headhunter" firms to look for candidates. Going direct to Hawaii-connect people and showing them what is available in the islands has a twofold effect, the businesses found.
It attracts the attention of many of Hawaii's finest graduates who want to come home from the mainland but haven't found the right jobs. And, because it recruits former Hawaii residents, it is attracting people who are more likely to stay once they do come home, HTDC said.
"You get people with Hawaii ties who are more apt to stay in Hawaii," making the cost of training them for the new positions worthwhile, Chiu-Irion said.
The local seminar started with one high-technology firm, AdTech Inc., talking to Punahou. The idea is to try to catch the Hawaii people when they are at home for the holidays and show them that there are rewarding ways they can get back home to stay.
To get more momentum, Iolani School and Kamehameha Schools were brought in. All three made contact with their high school graduates who were in college on the mainland or who already had graduated and were living on the mainland.
Meanwhile, the companies that took part in the San Jose fair were contacted and most said they were interested in doing something similar locally. Other firms were brought in, too.
They are Hawaii, national and international firms running highly technical operations in Hawaii across a range of fields, including development computer-audio-visual applications; Internet and corporate networking solutions; creative design and art work such as 3D cartooning; high-powered computer operations; banking and other areas.
The fair is from 4:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday at Punahou School. For more information, contact the High Technology Development Corp. at 539-3794. On the Web, see http://www.htdc.org and its job listing site, http://www.techjobshawaii.org, which also allows potential employees to list their credentials free.