Banner job fair shows link between will, work

Howard Manly

Deval Patrick likes telling the story of overcoming obstacles.

He told it again last week to close the Bay State Banner’s Diversity Today Career Explosion job fair. More than 400 job aspirants had spent the preceding four hours with about 40 Boston-area corporations talking about their skills and reviewing a variety of jobs, everything from senior management positions at Genzyme to entry-level positions at Amtrak.

Patrick had a sense of what needed to be said and talked about the early days of his campaign.

“I was told it wasn’t my time,” Patrick said, recalling the initial reactions of many as he began the process of seeking his new job.

The point was clear: Never surrender, especially when it comes to looking for a new job.

Such was the case with Cheryl Holmes. She received a Ph.D. in sociology from Boston College in 2005 and has worked for years in the field, including stints at the Harvard School of Public Health and with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts assessing the state’s contracts with minority- and women-owned businesses.

She said in an e-mail that she initially felt frustrated that some of the corporations appeared non-responsive. All of that changed the day after the job fair, when she received a telephone call from one of the corporations requesting an informational interview to determine whether her particular skills matched the company’s available positions.

“That one call made the encounter more than worthwhile,” Holmes said.

And that was the point of the Banner’s Career Explosion, the first such event in the newspaper’s 42-year history — and, by most accounts, a win-win for everyone involved.

“Our goal,” explained Sandra L. Casagrand, the Banner’s vice president for sales and marketing, “was to serve as a bridge between qualified candidates and major corporations.”

Bill Cain, supervisor of employment operations at Harvard University, said Harvard has about 400 jobs open, starting with entry-level kitchen help to senior-level executive positions.

“We were quite happy with the number of candidates,” Cain said. “Sometimes you’ll go to a fair like that and be twiddling your thumbs, but it had … the right number of good, professional candidates coming the whole time. The candidates that I met seemed to be better than your average job fair — more experienced, more educated and more professional.”

Cain said there were several candidates who would be contacted for further interviews.

In addition to Patrick, Paul Grogan, president and chief executive officer of The Boston Foundation, and Juan Cofield, president of the New England Area Conference of the NAACP, a co-sponsor of the event, punctuated the need for a strong workforce to remain in Boston.

Job seeker Leslie Courchaine said the fair inspired her to keep the faith.

“Looking for a job can be a daunting task at times,” Courchaine said in an e-mail. “I just moved here from Georgia and don’t know a lot of people. However, the other people I met looking for jobs were professional and friendly and that was great!”