Get Hired Hartford Aims To Match Jobs, Workers

95 Employers Expected To Attend

Get Hired Hartford, a job fair scheduled for Sept. 26 at the Connecticut Convention Center, is expected to draw 95 employers and as many as 2,000 job seekers, an event billed by its organizers as the largest career fair in Connecticut both free and open to the public.

Get Hired Hartford will run from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the convention center downtown. MGM Springfield, Hartford HealthCare, Infra-Metals, American Eagle Financial Credit Union and Cognizant are among 95 area businesses that have signed on; all told, the businesses will seek to fill 3,500 open positions, a publicist for the event said.

Goodwill is preparing job seekers ahead of time with resume critiques and interview coaching at its 10 career centers statewide.

“Our mission is to strengthen communities by helping people maximize their opportunities for meaningful employment,” Vickie Volpano, president and CEO of Goodwill of Western and Northern Connecticut, said in a prepared statement.

Marialena Eang, a program manager for Goodwill in Bridgeport, urges job seekers to research prospective employers before walking into a career fair or job interview.

“It’s about quality over quantity,” she said. “There’s going to be 90 businesses at the fair, but you don’t need to go to all of them.”

She tells job seekers to “keep it short, keep it professional.” A pitch should include three key skills you’d bring to the table, she adds.

Connecticut’s unemployment rate of 4.4 percent has lagged slightly behind the national rate, which in August was 3.9 percent.

But residents of Connecticut’s cities have struggled far more than their suburban and rural counterparts to find work; Hartford, with an 8.1 percent unemployment rate, had the worst job prospects of any municipality in Connecticut. Waterbury was second, with 7.4 percent of residents out of work, followed by Bridgeport at 6.8 percent.