[00:00:00] Speaker A: The Journey Hometown Journal. You can expect to find a number of employers with tables set up, available and ready and interested in talking to people who are looking for work.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Welcome to the Hometown Journal. I'm Mark Edwards. In our first segment, we're going to share with you some information about an upcoming job fair in the Central Virginia area. The Appomattox Job fair is Wednesday, August 12th. That'll be from 10am to 2pm and this is a regional job fair, so anyone is welcome to attend. It will be held at the Central Virginia Community College Appomattox Center. Tim saunders with Virginia CareerWorks is with us to share more about the event. Tim, welcome.
[00:00:40] Speaker A: Thank you Mark, appreciate you having me.
[00:00:42] Speaker B: Thanks for coming by. Tell us before we talk about the job fair, tell us a little bit about Virginia CareerWorks.
[00:00:49] Speaker A: So Virginia Career Works is the name for Virginia's workforce centers. There's around 30 around the state and they are supposed to be hubs for anything a person would need if they're looking for work. If someone is working, wanting to maybe go back to school or take classes for the very first time, they can come and learn about those opportunities at a Virginia Career work center. But we also have dedicated staff that is available every day to help someone create a resume if they don't have one, or search for jobs that are available and open in the community. We know where the jobs are. We can set you down, look at those jobs and even help you apply if you stop by our centers. That is a free service that we offer to everyone. And one thing that we love to do for employers is make hiring events available. We have them at our center, which is on Oddfellows Road. We do them all the time for individual employers. But occasionally we have an opportunity to have a multi employer hiring event, a job fair that has 15, 20 or more employers available. And this time we're partnering with Appomattox. Appomattox county reached out and said, hey, we'd love to offer something like this in our community. Can you help us make that happen? And so we're partnering with Appomattox County's government to offer this opportunity, this Appomattox Job Fair there. And this is going to be a regional event beyond just Appomattox for somebody
[00:02:05] Speaker B: who may be looking for work and they've never been to a job fair.
What should they expect? What's the day going to be like for them?
[00:02:14] Speaker A: You can expect to find a number of employers with tables set up, available and ready and interested in talking to people who are looking for Work. Maybe they already have a job and they're wanting to move up and find a new opportunity. Or maybe they've been kind of on the sidelines for a while thinking about getting back into the workforce. Maybe they've had family obligations to attend to that they needed to stay home for a little while. But now they're able to get back into the workforce. We know that right now with summer ending, some kids are going back to school. We've got a lot of folks that have had to watch kids at home that maybe now have the time in their life to go back part time or full time to work. They will find at this job fair a lot of employers set up really in kind of a casual atmosphere, just wanting to talk about the opportunities they have.
[00:03:01] Speaker B: What type of industries will be represented.
[00:03:03] Speaker A: It will be a wide range of employers. So we, for the Appomattox job fair, we have over 30 employers right now registered to participate. We hope that they will all be there. They've registered. But you will find everything from retailers like I saw Tractor Supply has signed up. They have some hourly positions that they're making available in retail. But you also have manufacturers like Virginia Metal Fab, which is located and based there in Appomattox. Family owned company. They're in the old Thomasville building. They are are looking for workers as well. We also have some larger regional employers like Packaging Corporation of America, pca. That is a paper mill that is located in the Gladstone area. They are not too far from Appomattox. They're needing a lot of skilled trade workers right now for their paper mill. They employ over, I think 300 people there at that paper mill. So you've got some large employers like that. You've got some others like CSE here in Lynchburg that operates large equipment and they're needing some workers. So you're going to find some Lynchburg area employers at this Appomattox job fair. So if you're hearing this and you're thinking, well, you know, I'm not looking for a job in Appomattox necessarily, you may want to make the drive out there if you're living in Lynchburg or Bedford county, because you may find an employer out there recruiting that has a job available for you in the Lynchburg area.
[00:04:21] Speaker B: The great thing about a job fair, from what you were talking, you said it's more of a casual setting. So you've got the people that will be. They are looking for work right now, but. But it's also good for the people that they have A job, but maybe they're looking at a career change and they can investigate a little bit.
[00:04:38] Speaker A: Absolutely. It's a casual atmosphere, meaning that you can walk up and not expect to be interviewed on the spot. They may want to do that. If you present a resume that's really attractive to them, they may say, hey, let's go over here and have a conversation. But it's an opportunity for someone that really is just kind of, you know, checking out, testing the waters to see what's out there, and just talk to a hiring manager, find out what opportunities they have now or maybe opportunities they may have a few months in the future. Some of the recruiters that come out there, they go in with the expectation that there may be some people that they run into that aren't available now but might be available in the future. So they're willing to talk about opportunities that may be coming up two or three months down the road.
[00:05:19] Speaker B: I wanted to ask you this because it's so much in the news, and that is AI in the workplace. What are you seeing in your position regarding that? Are you seeing or hearing of more employers that are looking for people that have AI skills?
[00:05:38] Speaker A: I think what I'm hearing from employers right now is AI is not necessarily taking the jobs like we've heard so much about. It's not replacing jobs locally yet. But I think employers are wanting workers who have the ability to integrate AI into their workflow or even automated processes. I've heard employers saying, hey, I want my workers to take some classes to learn about automation, to figure out how to do things more efficiently. So I'm not seeing necessarily jobs going away because of AI, but I am hearing employers saying, I want my workers to understand how to use this tool effectively in their work.
[00:06:20] Speaker B: Give us the time, the location again of the job fair.
[00:06:24] Speaker A: So the Appomattox Job Fair is happening August 12th from 10am until 2pm at the CVCC Appomattox Center. It's right there as you go into Appomattox at 136 Carver Lane. It's right there in a facility kind of off to the left as you enter Appomattox.
[00:06:41] Speaker B: Tim, I mentioned AI, but the other thing that we're hearing a lot of across the country is this demand for skilled workers.
[00:06:49] Speaker A: I would just say that anybody right now that is thinking about a future career, I would say think about the skilled trades. We've got a lot of employers. I talked to three this week that said I really need skilled trade workers as electricians, as plumbers, as industrial maintenance. That's a big one. Right now we've got a lot of manufacturers in the Lynchburg area that are looking for industrial maintenance. These are positions that do require a credential, usually a journey worker's card, what we used to call a journeyman's card.
That's something that you really kind of have to be planning for right now. So if someone is listening to this and they're thinking about guiding their son or daughter into a future career, that's going to be AI proof in the Lynchburg area. Something that they can do that they're going to be able to make a lot of money doing. Guide them to the skilled trades, tell them to maybe look into Liberty University Technical Studies or Central Virginia Community College, taking those classes that would go toward a journeyman's journey workers card so that they can become an electrician, plumber, plumber, H VAC technician, industrial maintenance technician. That's where the money is. That's where we're seeing a lot of job growth in the Lynchburg area right now. And I can expect to see even more opportunities, especially for electricians in the Lynchburg area going forward. They can make $70,000 a year early in their career.
[00:08:10] Speaker B: That is Tim Saunders with Virginia Career Works. And again, the Appomattox Job Fair is Wednesday, Aug. 12 from 10am to 2pm That'll be at the Central Virginia Community College Appomattox Center. You can find out more about the job fair when you visit vcw centralregion.com I'm Mark Edwards. Thank you for joining us for the Hometown Journal.
[00:08:35] Speaker A: You've been listening to the Journey Hometown Journal. If you're a part of an organization or know of one in the communities we serve and would like to be considered as a guest, please make your
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