A job fair's a place to hand out resumes and get information, but it's only a stop on the way to a job. It's by no means a guarantee of a job.
Still, as soon as Jason Bugbee of Norwich heard about the job fair today in Groton, "I got up, dressed, showered, and ran down here just as fast as I could," he said.
Since Bugbee lost his job as an assistant project manager for a construction firm, he's been trying to find a new job.
In the General Dynamics line at the job fair, he heard Electric Boat might have had a job for him, two weeks ago.
"I've been everywhere," he said. "Monster, websites - I go through the paper every day, drive around town, just nothing. I get turned down all the time. No one's looking for anyone."
He gave his resume to Stephanie Rodriguez at Barnum Financial Group.
"We have a full comprehensive training component for an entry level position for people to start with us," Rodriguez said. Her company is looking for financial planners to sell insurance and investments.
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"It really doesn't matter what your background is," she said, of the job requirements. "It's really being passionate in wanting to help people, number one, and secondly just having a good work ethic because you are developing your own business."
John Tirinzonie, the economist for the Connecticut Department of Labor, sponsor of the job fair, said finding a job now is tough.
"The education and health care services have been growing. They've created about six thousand jobs in the last year," he said. "Leisure and hospitality have been growing, but we even see within industries such as financial services and manufacturing companies that are hiring.
"They're just not hiring in the numbers that we're used to seeing."
Connecticut's most recent unemployment rate was 7.5 percent. Approximately 142,000 residents are unemployed and want to find new jobs, Tirinzonie said. He is set to release updated figures next Thursday.
