Aaron Ota, dressed for success in a vintage aloha shirt, black tie and a gray blazer, was busily filling out a job application in his quest for a front desk or concierge position in the hospitality sector.
Nearby inside the Neal Blaisdell Exhibition Hall, Tommy Chun, pen in hand, was seeking to return to the technical field after getting laid off from his previous job.
And Jennifer Rensch, a recent college graduate from University of Central Florida, and Justice Lovell, a second-year Leeward Community College student, were looking into what the Hawaii job market had to offer.
They were among 2,500 job seekers networking with more than 100 employers Tuesday at the Hawaii Career Expo sponsored by the Honolulu Star-Advertiser and ALTRES Staffing. The number of employers was about 10 percent higher than the exhibitor booths at the Star-Advertiser’s Career Expo in April. There was a long line outside the door when the event opened at 9 a.m.
Ota, 38, who just began his own line of vintage clothing in which he repurposes aloha wear into accessories, said he had been on the other side of the hiring process when he was a manager of a retail clothing store in San Francisco. He said he liked the face-to-face interaction a lot better than submitting online applications.
"There were a lot of applications that would come my way or get submitted through email and just get lost in the shuffle," he said. "So I didn’t want to be part of that. I feel there’s no better way to lock down a job than with a smile and a firm handshake. It’s a priceless interaction that can’t be measured."
Phyllis Delos Santos, training store manager for Longs Drugs/CVS, was prescreening applicants for jobs at the company’s 54 stores in the state and liked what she saw.
"They’re very highly qualified, very promising, higher energy and very experienced," she said of those applicants she interviewed. "We’re very fortunate to be able to meet people with the qualities they have. At the store level, you don’t see that as much."
Chun, 35, who works as a waiter-busser for a Waikiki hotel after getting laid off from his job repairing consumer electronics, said he has a degree in electronics and would like to get another technical position.
"I figured there were a lot of opportunities where companies can hire you on the spot as compared to filling out applications online," he said. "Usually online, when you fill out an application, it’s computer software that determines what kind of people they want to hire. But when you come to a show like this, you get to meet people face to face."
Natalie Reyno, human resources senior manager for Times Supermarkets, said the company has about 50 to 60 openings statewide for positions from relief manager to entry-level jobs, food service and pharmacy.
"We’re seeing a good group of quality people," she said. "Normally we don’t participate in these job fairs because of the type of applicants we normally get are not what we’re looking for. But at today’s Career Expo we’re seeing a lot of management-quality people and we’re mainly here for management."
Song Choi, director of marketing for ALTRES, said, "These days to reach all the different pools of potential candidates that we need, you have to use really a multi-tiered approach. You have to be on TV, you have to be on radio, you have to be online, you have to be at job fairs. It really takes a diversified approach just because media has fragmented."
Rensch, 23, who was a year removed from college and back on Oahu with her family, said she was seeking a hospitality position.
"Nowadays you have to do everything online so it’s hard to get that one-on-one connection and make a good first impression when your first impression is on a computer screen," she said. "This is a unique opportunity."
Lovell, 18, who graduated from Kapolei High School in 2013, is pursuing a business management degree at Leeward Community College and wanted to look at jobs as a bank teller or representative.
"If you come to a job fair, they can kind of remember your face or if they like you or didn’t," she said. "So what you do and bring and what you say can affect the way they look at you. And maybe they’ll want you to apply for their company."
