Hundreds Show Up at Hospitality Job Fair

Hundreds of people showed up today [Feb 17] at the Hospitality Industry Job Fair put on by the National Training Board at the Fairmont Hamilton.

When announcing the event, Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Kim Wilson previously said: “There are hundreds of job opportunities available within the industry. Hotel partners will come together at this forum to share myriad opportunities and to accept applications. The Island’s Hospitality Industry is seeking to employ Bermudians in a variety of entry-level positions in order to capitalize on the benefits realized by having a local workforce. The Department of Labour and Training will use the event to update its database and ensure that all persons that attend the job fair are registered with them.”

By the hundreds, in two rooms, people sat at round banquet tables filling out job applications before passing them on to the Hospitality Industry representatives who had set up booths and tables.

Last year when a similar job fair was set up, a senior person from the Department of Labour and Training said that a maximum of three hundred people had shown up. Today, the crowd was so great that a queue had formed that snaked about 75 yards from the convention room entrance back towards the steps leading up to the hotel’s Gazebo Room.

This large crowd was made up of male and female, blacks and whites; new entrants to the workforce as well as people in their fifties; and persons whose job skills and capabilities would range from blue-collar jobs to white-collar jobs. Attire ranged from smart business clothing, to baggy jeans, caps and sneakers.

Hospitality reps came from the Grotto Bay Hotel, Newstead & Belmont Hills, Fairmont group, MEF group, Island Restaurants, Tucker’s Point, and others. Representatives of Government were there including Ministers Burch, Minors and Wilson, and MPs Dale Butler and Randy Horton. Also present were BIU President Chris Furbert, John Harvey from the Bermuda Hotel Association and Stephen Todd and Diane Gordon from the Chamber of Commerce.

Stephen Todd, President of the Chamber of Commerce said that he was not surprised by the large turnout. He saw it as Bermudians “taking advantage of an opportunity to seek a place in the workplace.” He said that the present economy had seen a shift from working and holding a job for luxuries to taking a job and staying in work in order to “meet the expenses of family, rent, food and of keeping a family unit intact.”

Mr Todd pointed out that being in work, almost any kind of work, would be better than going on to Financial Assistance as that simply shifted a cost and added to Government’s costs which were already high. He also said that both Government and the Private Sector had to find a way to work together to create a stimulus that would result in more jobs.

One man, informing us that he had been laid off from his job as an electrician in November 2010, said that he and his wife had bought one of the recently completed ‘affordable housing units’ built and sold by Government and they now found themselves unable to meet the monthly mortgage payments. He commenting that all the jobs on offer here were from the Hospitality Industry.

This prompted an energetic response from BIU President Chris Furbert who went off and checked. Mr Furbert quickly returned and confirmed that there would be a similar job fair for the Construction Industry. Mr Furbert said that it would likely be on 28 February, but he urged the man to consider taking on any work.

Minister David Burch, in his usual forceful style, commented that in this economic climate, no employer should be telling anyone that they were overqualified for a job. He said that employers should be prepared to take on any Bermudian person who could do the job and be an asset to their business; and that this was the other side of asking Bermudians to be flexible in their expectations. Minister Burch said that Bermudians had to be prepared to accept any job and then work hard and honestly at that job – whatever it was.

When asked if he was surprised by the numbers who had come out, BIU President Chris Furbert said that he was not. He said that he thought that Bermuda’s current pool of unemployed Bermudians was at least 2,500 and could be as high as 4,000. Mr Furbert said that with only about 28,000 Bermudians in the workforce and recognizing that a significant element of the Guest Worker workforce consisted of job creators, there was still a need to address the balance between keeping Bermudians in employment and sustaining Bermuda’s existing economic model.

Update: Videos added here.

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