Piney Woods Philosopher: Using job fairs to help unemployed

By BILL COBBS/Columnist

Piney and She were very much interested in the (local Florida) attempts to meet the depression with its growing employment and high food costs problems.
As usual, the local newspapers were in the forefront of trying to solve the problem.
One of the most prominent ways to try to help was the creation of a job fair.
All of the media—newspapers, TV, radio—had joined to publicize the job fair and about 100 companies had participated.
The system was pretty simple. They chose a large and popular central assembly hall and building that could accommodate thousands of people, and set up more than a 100 booths, each booth manned by a personnel manager and a group of interviewers.
The publicity preceding the job fair urged the public who needed jobs to prepare a fine curriculum vitae about their qualifications. Arriving at the job fair, they could go to the booth that best represented their qualifications, or several of them, and leave a résumé and perhaps get an immediate interview.
The fair was quite successful, and it was obvious that several thousand jobs had resulted from the exercise, plus a backlog for future jobs.
Piney and She Who Must Be Obeyed believed that the good idea was worthy of copying nationally, and of course in particular in their home area of Bland, Wythe, and Smyth counties.

A writer, Bill Cobbs divides his time between Southwest Virginia and Florida.