Boston job fair helps foster sense of community
Photo by Clay Lomneth/The American Legion

Boston job fair helps foster sense of community

Like many of the job seekers who came to Boston’s Fenway Park on May 24 for a Hiring Our Heroes job fair, Jon Combast was looking to see what jobs were available.

“I’m open to anything; I’ve done electronics repair for nine years, so I have a little bit of a different background than most people,” said Combast, a 9-½ year veteran of the Coast Guard now serving in the Coast Guard Reserve.

Eric Eversole, senior adviser and president of Hiring Our Heroes, emphasized the point when speaking to the nearly 300 veterans, servicemembers and military spouses who attended the event — look outside your comfort zone to find all the job opportunities available.

“For a lot of young veterans, they may not understand the depth and breadth of opportunity that exists in corporate America,” Eversole said. “They may think the only type of job at CVS is stocking shelves, or CarMax is selling cars, or GE is an engineering job; there are so many other incredible opportunities with these companies … that it’s really absolutely critical that they go out and explore those opportunities.

“So a large part of what we encourage young servicemembers to do, and all veterans, is to come out and explore, and not only to look for a job but for that career that’s going to make them happy and provide real economic benefit to them and their families.”

Matt Kaczynski, a regional human resource manager at J.B. Hunt Transport Services, has seen that firsthand. He acknowledged that he didn’t know much about J.B. Hunt when he was job-seeking eight years ago.

“I ran into them in a periodical … a lot of servicemembers don’t know that they qualify for jobs with us that may be outside what they did in the military, but translate really well into the transportation industry,” Kaczynski said.

Kaczynski has also seen a growth in job fairs targeted to veterans and transitioning servicemembers over the last few years.

“I was here last year, there were about half the number of vendors, not a lot of foot traffic, not nearly as much as this year, so it’s been fantastic,” he said.

“What we’re seeing is, even though the overall economic situation has gotten significantly better for veterans in the last five years, we’re now seeing veterans and transitioning servicemembers coming out here for their second or third job opportunity,” Eversole said. “It’s not about just finding a job, it’s about coming back out because they were successful the first time and finding that next career opportunity. And that’s really exciting because it means a couple of things: one, we’re creating a good network in that local community that’s supporting these events; two, we’ve got a good product, and that’s important, too, that helps those veterans find jobs; and three, leverage a brand like the Red Sox to help bring that community together, it’s truly a win-win-win situation.”

Eversole added that events like this one help connect veterans and their community.

“We know that partners like The American Legion are a strong part of that local community, and so having The American Legion as well as a lot of other local community representatives out, it really creates not only the economic opportunities, but the larger community opportunities,” he said.

The Boston event drew 275 job seekers, 73 employers and 11 service providers to Fenway Park. Through 45 returned exit surveys, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce found that 386 résumés were accepted, 345 interviews were conducted on-site and 47 firm job offers were made.