Monthly Quonset job fair has firms big and small

FEVER PITCH: Peg Lamere, Senior Recruiter with Toray Plastics (America) Inc., a tenant at Quonset Business Park, discusses job opportunities with Diane Miceli of North Kingstown. / COURTESY QUONSET DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION
FEVER PITCH: Peg Lamere, Senior Recruiter with Toray Plastics (America) Inc., a tenant at Quonset Business Park, discusses job opportunities with Diane Miceli of North Kingstown. / COURTESY QUONSET DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION

When Daniel Martineau, the line supervisor who screens job applicants for Trico Specialty Films, LLC, learned about the new monthly job fairs at the Quonset Business Park, he rearranged his schedule so he could attend the first one.
Martineau works third shift at the manufacturing firm that employs 17 others at 310 Compass Circle in the North Kingstown business park. He says he finds some of his most qualified job applicants through the online aggregator, Craigslist.
But an October job fair at the Crowne Plaza Providence-Warwick in Warwick, sponsored by the R.I. Department of Labor and Training, exposed Martineau to more potential job candidates, he said. So, he expected the Nov. 5 Quonset job fair, also sponsored by DLT and three partners, to lead to even more applicants who may exemplify his company’s “core values,” he reasoned – values like the dependability that comes with “doing what is expected and what you say … every time.”
“We’re really trying everything, not necessarily because it’s so hard to find anybody; we’re just trying to find our best options … in terms of recruiting,” Martineau said. “We’re a small company, but we do plan to grow. So, we don’t just want someone to come in at entry level, we want them to come in at entry level and grow.”
Small employers such as Trico, which makes rolls of film that eventually are used on everything from labeling to hospital wristbands and posters, are part of the audience DLT is trying to attract to these job fairs, which will be held the first Wednesday of each month, said DLT Director Charles J. Fogarty, and Connie Parks, chief of labor and training operations. More than 175 job seekers talked to 11 employers at the Nov. 5 job fair at the Quonset Development Corporation Annex Building at 95 Cripe St. in North Kingstown, said Ted Kresse, a spokesperson for the QDC.
By making the Quonset job fair a regular event and including larger employers like General Dynamics Electric Boat and Toray Plastics (America) Inc., which are growing, Parks said, “We’re hoping the smaller [firms] will be able to have access to job seekers they may not have even known existed.”
Quonset is home to 175 employers and approximately 9,500 employees, said Kresse. The corporation “is committed to helping more companies succeed and grow jobs here,” he said in an email.
“When the DLT approached the QDC about partnering on these job fairs, the QDC knew it would be a great opportunity to help several of the companies in the park identify good candidates to fill their open positions. It was also a great opportunity for more Rhode Islanders to come and learn about those companies hiring, and see how Quonset has become a major economic engine of growth for the state,” he said.
Business-park tenants already have access to the online jobs portal www.QuonsetJobs.com, and DLT regularly sponsors job fairs around the state, Kresse and Fogarty said. But Quonset is a city-sized industrial site with critical mass and companies of a variety of sizes, making it a draw for many job seekers, Fogarty said.
Other participating employers included Toray, Ocean State Job Lot, and Tradesmen International, a national recruiter of skilled craftsmen that has 50 employees at its Rhode Island location in the business park at 70 Romano Vineyard Way. “Our needs change,” said Tradesmen International Office Manager Brian Dursi before the event. “The Rhode Island office deals specifically in the marine and boatyard industry, so we are always looking for qualified, skilled labor employees. Ideally, we could put 10 people to work if we found people with the right skills.”
Dursi and other employer representatives said the value of the face-to-face connection at job fairs like these, while limited, can be useful.
“It is helpful to interact with the people directly,” Dursi said. “You’re almost in a sense doing on-the-spot interviews. If they have their resumes, you can discuss their skill set and do a job interview right there.”
Fogarty noted that job fairs don’t replace online applications but provide another format for finding the best job candidates.
“You can’t just focus on one [approach] or the other,” Fogarty said. “A lot of times that nonverbal interview process is important. You get [information] that you wouldn’t get online.”
That was true for Martineau at the Crowne Plaza job fair, he said, where he was easily able to spot serious job candidates as well as those whose primary motivation appeared to be verifying job-search efforts for unemployment.
Peg Lamere, a senior recruiter at Toray, said the Quonset job fair is an opportunity to exchange information with a job applicant about shifts, how to apply, and even to share details on company products, since it surprises people to learn that the films Toray makes are used on snack-food packaging products like Lays or Fritos chips.
Toray has about 650 employees in Rhode Island and is “always looking for good production people,” Lamere said. •

No posts to display