© 2024 | WUWF Public Media
11000 University Parkway
Pensacola, FL 32514
850 474-2787
NPR for Florida's Great Northwest
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Virtual Job Fair Looks To Help Vets Find Work

Blackboard.com

Paycheck for Patriots, an annual job fair aimed at helping veterans find jobs will be taking place tomorrow.

“It’s an annual event. It’s one of the more nationally recognized events” said Russell Raught, a veteran’s employment representative at CareerSource EscaRosa out of Milton. “So we were lucky enough to be approached again to go ahead and do it. Of course this year it’s not going to be done at an auditorium or  a hall, it’s going to be on a virtual format.”

Paychecks for Patriots is a special statewide hiring fair dedicated to finding jobs for Florida veterans. More than 6,200 veterans and military family members found work in previous Paychecks for Patriots events. With this year’s higher unemployment rate, CareerSource EscaRosa is opening up the event.

“Paychecks for Patriots really highlights and reaches out to veterans, but it’s open to everybody. And at Career Source Escarosa our mission is to connect job seekers to employers. So we’re not singling out anybody who’s not a veteran, they’re more than welcome, in fact encouraged, to participate.”               

For Tuesday’s event there will be about 25 employers looking for job seekers. “(Companies) like Coca Cola, (companies) like S.T. Engineering. We’ve been reaching out to DynaCorp, so we’ve focus on law enforcement and we focus on service oriented jobs that veterans seem to gravitate towards, but it really represents the whole greater Pensacola area business community. So just about any job you can think of is going to be available at this job fair.”

Raught says that despite the state and national unemployment numbers, there are plenty of jobs in Northwest Florida. “There are currently more opportunities than there are job seekers. Employers are really bending over backwards trying to get people to come back to work. There are some great opportunities in the Pensacola area, the Milton area, all over Escambia County and Santa Rosa County.”

Job seekers will need to preregister for the virtual event at floridajobs.org/paychecksforpatriots. There you can build a resume and present it to employers, some of which will be doing virtual interviews right on the spot. Paychecks for Patriots is Tuesday, November 10 from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m.  

Bob Barrett has been a radio broadcaster since the mid 1970s and has worked at stations from northern New York to south Florida and, oddly, has been able to make a living that way. He began work in public radio in 2001. Over the years he has produced nationally syndicated programs such as The Environment Show and The Health Show for Northeast Public Radio's National Productions.