Job fair offers opportunities for justice-impacted youth

MOSES LAKE — Some young people in Grant County took a step toward employment Wednesday at Grant County Youth Services’ first job fair. 

“One of the programs that we teach is on education and employment,” said Tammy Roloff, a treatment counselor with Grant County Youth Services. “We found that (when it came to) getting work experience, we were having difficulty finding businesses to work with, to do job shadowing or placement. It sparked this idea to do an employment fair for justice-impacted families.”

“Justice-impacted” can mean a number of things, Roloff said. Sometimes it means that a juvenile or their family have been through the criminal justice system, but it can also extend to foster families, families with dependency problems or other at-risk youth. All of those things place young people at a disadvantage when it comes to finding a job. The job fair was a way for the youth to gain experience interacting with potential employers.

“(We) hit the ground running looking for resources and employers who would be willing to interact with our youth and provide them an opportunity,” Roloff said.

The job fair, held in the Huck Fuller Building at the Grant County Fairgrounds, wasn’t open to the public, organizers explained. About 48 people – both youth and their families – came to talk with a handful of potential employers, including the Grant County Sheriff’s Office, WorkSource and SkillSource,  military recruiters, and Walmart, which was in need of workers for a store remodel in Ephrata.

“The remodeling starts in August, but we’re hiring right now,” said Mitzy Muñoz, who was staffing the Walmart table along with Palani Barragan. 

“The start time is almost immediately to get them on par,” Barragan said. 

The store was looking for 30-40 workers to work an overnight shift on the remodeling project, Muñoz said. There are also some daytime positions available, Barragan said.

We are very accommodating to people’s schedules,” he said. “It’s Walmart, so there’s a job for every shift.”

Not every table was staffed by an employer seeking recruits. Some represented agencies or organizations offering support to the youth looking for work. Coral Rodriguez, a youth outreach specialist with Carelon Behavioral Health, had toothbrushes, toothpaste and shampoo on the table to give away.

“I thought, instead of giving out stickers, maybe something they can actually use in order to get ready for an interview,” Rodriguez said. 

Rodriguez was helping visitors prepare for job interviews on the spot, she said.  

“I ask them a professional interview question and if they answer correctly, they get to pick (a prize),” she said. 

GCYS also had the potential employees’ backs when it came to presenting themselves, in the form of racks and stacks of donated clothing and other items arranged outside the building.

“There are some families who don’t have the appropriate clothing for job interviews,” Roloff said. “So, they can come here, take a bag and take whatever clothes they want so they can be confident when they look for employment.”

Roloff wasn’t sure when the next job fair would be, but she expressed that they wanted to keep putting them on. The feedback she received from attendees cemented that, she said.

“The parents who attended made a point to let us know that the resources that they didn't even know that our community had were most beneficial to them, and they were happy that their child was able to apply for jobs,” Roloff said “One parent stated that she wished she would have known about some of the resources six months ago. Now she's hoping that she may be able to be able to help other parents and connect them to the resources that they were connected to (at the fair).”

    Mitzy Muñoz, left, and Palani Barragan represented Walmart at the GCYS job fair Wednesday, looking for workers for a remodeling project at the Ephrata store.
  

    Besides employers, several community organizations and agencies were at the GCYS job fair to help attendees prepare to navigate the world of employment.
  

    Racks and tables of donated clothing and other items stood outside the job fair Wednesday.