Numerous job fairs were held in North Texas this weekend to help fill vacant spots in schools, as well as emergency services.
At the Care2Fight Health & Wellness Fair, Fort Worth ISD held a job fair to hire school nurses and other school positions. Sonya Williams, a registered nurse of 36 years, was hired on the spot.
“Pretty exciting. I still can’t believe that it went really fast and smooth,” Williams said. “The school they’re talking about is probably 15 minutes from my home. Right now, my commute is over an hour each way. That’s gotten real old.”
Yassmin Lee, PhD is the Executive Director of Talent Acquisition and Development for Fort Worth ISD. As a large school district, Lee said there are some challenges in filling vacant positions. The district recruits year-round to help meet demand, Lee said.
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“Our board feels strongly that every campus should have every type of position necessary in order for the operation to run smoothly,” she said. “We’re also introducing a number of new positions that we haven’t had in the district. We added additional nurses and health assistant positions.”
Across North Texas, several job fairs were held Saturday. Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) hosted a hiring event seeking bus operators, police officers and fare enforcement officers.
Laurie Larrea, President of Workforce Solutions Greater Dallas, said there is a greater push for jobs in the public sector.
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“We’re seeing a huge uptick in community service. Fire, police, rescue, city. All cities and counties are looking for workers, because there’s so many control issues when you’re running city services,” Larrea said. “Healthcare and the care industry is huge right now. So, healthcare support. Not necessarily RN’s, but lots of people can be employed in healthcare with a support job.”
According to Larrea, the current unemployment rate in Dallas County is around 3.7%. This mirrors the unemployment for most of North Texas, she said.
In Fort Worth, a hiring event for first responders was held at the Tarrant County Resource Connection center on Saturday. Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office was one of about 50 participating agencies.
“To our knowledge, this is the largest first responder hiring event around this area,” Chief Deputy Jennifer Gabbert said. “In the first responder industry, you need somebody that really has a heart for serving. They care about their community.”
According to Chief Gabbert, the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office currently has about 180 vacant positions.
“We hire for detention officers. We have a lot of detention positions. We hire for sheriff’s deputies, which would be street officers, court officers, judicial officers,” Gabbert said. “That is the most we have had to my knowledge. That’s kind of been a pattern across the nation when it comes to first responders and the difficulty to fill those positions, probably in the last couple of years.”
Gabbert said one of the reasons behind the challenge in recruiting is due to the dangers associated with the job of first responders.
“We’ve seen dangerous situations in the last couple of years,” she said. “It’s difficult to find people who are willing to put themselves out there, but that’s why you need the special people. The people who have to the heart to serve. They care for the community.”
According to the latest jobs report from the Texas Workforce Commission, Texas added a total of 16,400 nonfarm jobs in August 2022. For the tenth consecutive month, the state set new employment highs as total nonfarm employment reached 13,530,100.
