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Job fair serves up
carnival attractions

The thing about a "job fair" is that with all the people milling around, it looks like an episode of the "Antiques Road Show," except, instead of people carrying old lamp shades and jewelry boxes, they are carrying resumes and letters of recommendation.

On the "Antiques Road Show" there's always the lucky guy holding the Ming Dynasty vase he got for $4.35 at a yard sale being interviewed for the telecast, and then there's the poor dude in the background holding a set of worthless jelly glasses that have been in the family for generations.

It was sort of like that at the Job Quest Job Fair at the Blaisdell Center this week. Snappily dressed people apparently holding dynamite resumes being wooed by various business representatives, while other unfortunate souls stood in line behind them thinking, "Gee, maybe wearing the slippers, gym shorts and sweatshirt wasn't such a good idea."

I waded into the crowd to check out this year's crop of job hunters and job providers. The good news is that with only 3 percent unemployment in Hawaii, there are lots of jobs out there, and the starting pay is pretty decent. The bad news is that the guy in the gym shorts and sweat pants seemed to be striking out at the Pizza Hut table. He headed toward the FBI recruitment table looking very unlike G-man material.

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CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARBULLETIN.COM Charles Memminger gets behind the wheel of a Superstar Hawaii Transit bus, much to the dismay of Bernie Bachiller, a driver for the company. The company was one of more than 100 employers that participated in the Job Quest Job Fair at the Blaisdell Center.

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THE IDEA OF A job fair is to bring potential employees and employers together in one big place so that everybody can be disappointed together. Just kidding. With more than 120 private and government recruiters, and what looked to me to be about 8,000 job seekers (most of them wearing reasonable attire and sensible shoes), the odds were that quite a few of them were going to hook up.

Let's get the official public service announcement stuff out of the way first: The job fair is held about three times a year, sponsored by (I know this is painful, but hang on) Oahu Work Links, an employment and training partnership between nonprofit agencies, the state of Hawaii and City and County of Honolulu. That sounds deadly boring unless you are looking for a job. Then it's exciting as all get out.

So all these businesses and government agencies set up booths and tables in the exhibition hall and people flood in looking, I believe, for the job that offers the highest pay for the least amount of work. At least, that's what I was keeping my eye out for.

Available jobs ranged, literally, from burger flippers to bank VPs. But they all seemed to have one rule in common: You have to take a drug test before being hired. One of the businesses looking for workers was Diagnostic Laboratory Services, a company that performs most of the drug tests for companies. So if you got hired there, you could, theoretically, test yourself for drugs. Or maybe not. On a happy note, none of the companies was demanding chardonnay tests before employment.

MANY JOB HUNTERS are what Beth Busch, vice president of Success Advertising, one of the job-fair sponsors, calls "passive candidates," people who already have jobs but are looking to trade up.

I met one of those, an attractive blonde flight attendant -- hey, you didn't expect me to talk to the guy in the gym shorts, did you? -- named Erica Gillick. After eight months as a flight attendant, Gillick said she was looking for a job where "I can stay on land for more than two days at a time." She was busily filling out applications at a table crowded with job seekers. With a college degree in communications, she had gathered applications from Goodwill, banks and a couple of hotels.

Some of the tables doing brisk business were military or law enforcement in nature. Daily stories of roadside bombs in Iraq apparently isn't deterring young, adventure-seeking patriots from looking for jobs with the Army National Guard, or the plain old U.S. Army for that matter.

I asked Sgt. Elizabeth Henderson if National Guard recruits are sent directly to Iraq. She said, "They have to get trained first." So we're lucky there. Actually, basic training is only six weeks, so anyone looking to trade in Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six video war game for the real deal won't have long to wait.

The FBI table, curiously placed next to the Frito-Lay recruiters (Funyuns vs. Gunyuns) was also attracting a crowd. So was the Honolulu Police Department's Crime Scene Unit table. Ever since TV shows like "C.S.I." became hits, everyone wants to be a forensic investigator.

HPD crime-scene officer Michael Lynch said actual crime scene investigation is exactly like it is on the TV series, with all of its "instant technology" and "aha!" moments. Actually, he said it's nothing like it but it's still fun.

BUT THE REAL FUN seemed to be at the 45-foot-long "Superstar Hawaii Transit Service" bus. You can have your fun digging through garbage looking for crime clues -- I want to drive a $300,000 bus.

And Bernie Bachiller, who's been driving the big, slick charter buses for 20 years, actually let me get behind the wheel. Being the nervous type, he wouldn't let me take it on a spin around the exhibition hall.

Bernie's driven for Roberts and other transit companies, but said Superstar is his "last stop" when it comes to jobs. (Bus drivers tend to state everything in "transit speak.") The coolest thing I learned is that you can charter one of those big babies for only $100 an hour. So the next time you want to surprise your friends, pull up in front of their house in a 45-foot-long, 30-foot-high super bus. But you've gotta let Bernie drive.

There were too many other job opportunities on view to mention here. I did notice that the young female applicants queuing up in front of the Federal Bureau of Prisons display were markedly larger and burlier than the ones visiting the Mary Kay Cosmetics table just a few feet away. I pointed that out to an attractive dark-haired Mary Kay recruiter -- hey, I can't spend all day talking to Bernie -- and she said, "Yeah. Looks like they could use our help."

The only table I saw empty of recruiters and applicants was for a copy machine repair company. Apparently, copy machine repair is such hateful work that the recruiters were over at the "C.S.I." booth looking for new jobs.