Jobs for people, people for jobs

By 10 o’clock, on a soggy Friday morning, the parking lot at Bass Community Hall was packed with the cars and trucks of area employers and job-seekers who turned out for last week’s career fair, an event organized by the Iola Area Chamber of Commerce and KansasWorks.
A good chunk of the tiny tarmac was occupied by the KansasWorks Mobile Center, a brightly-painted 38-foot-long custom-built bus, outfitted with 11 computer work stations, where job-seekers can search the agency’s employment database and receive advice on creating or updating their resumes.
The main portion of the fair, however, took place inside the buff-colored building on North Buckeye Street, where, according to Susie Ellis of KansasWorks, more than 200 potential applicants browsed the 34 employer booths. Among area employers in attendance were B&W Trailer Hitches, Russell Stover, Tramec Sloan, Rookies Sports Bar & Grill (opening soon) and Emprise Bank. 
Jennifer Jones, a recruiter from Emprise’s flagship branch in Wichita, felt her two-hour drive to Iola was well justified. “We’re looking for positions in Chanute, Iola and Humboldt. And we are specifically looking for tellers in Iola and Humboldt. We absolutely had some good candidates here that we’ll follow up with.”
The “catalyst” for the fair, according to the chamber’s director Shelia Lampe, was the announced closure of Iola’s Herff Jones, which will subtract nearly 80 jobs from the local economy when the plant shuts its doors come October.
While a handful of Herff Jones employees turned out for the half-day event, fair attendees ran the gamut: From Angela, a 22-year-old former waitress from Independence, who was on the lookout for a job with a more predictable schedule, better benefits, and something that put her less on her feet; to the middle-aged Gerri Gray, a trained nurse’s aide, who is looking to re-enter the workforce after two years spent attending to her failing kidneys and to the two toddler grandchildren left in her care.
Harder are the cases like Shawn Young’s. At 45, Young has spent periods of his life on the payroll at Russell Stover, Walmart, The Greenery, and spent a sporadic 10 years before that working at Hi-Lo Industries in Chanute.
While Young feels he may have exhausted his options in Allen County, the fact that he has no car limits his ability to work anywhere else.
“Truth is, I ran out of money about a month back,” says the soft-spoken Young,” so I’ve just been managing. After being out of work for, like I said, 10 months, I’ve been looking for a job anywhere I can get something. It just hasn’t worked, so I came out here to see what was available.”
By 10:30, Young had already met with “quite a few” employers who piqued his interest. “But the other problem is my cell phone is off and I can’t call anybody. So that’s another detriment to what I’m trying to accomplish.”
Although Young arrived in Iola with his family in 1986, and graduated from the local high school, his peer network in the subsequent 25 years has thinned to, at best, a few acquaintances. He is estranged from his brother, and the rest of his family is deceased. He’s not married and hasn’t been in a relationship in close to 15 years. He lost his food allowance from DCF, he says, and isn’t eligible to collect items from the food pantry again until October.
(Proving that when it rains it pours, Young also had his bike stolen late last month.)
“The days are long, but I do try to keep my spirits up,” he says. “I walk a lot. It helps me to think. … But right now, I guess I’m feeling pretty desperate. That’s basically why I’m here, to scope out what’s going on.”

JOE WALTER is the man behind the KansasWorks Mobile Center. He both drives the bus and, once he gets its length parked, provides career advice to the displaced workers who climb aboard. “I do two or three job fairs a week,” says Walter, who is based in Hays, “and cover all of Kansas, except Leavenworth, Kansas City and Overland Park.”
Walter has been with the state workforce agency for 15 years, and was a high school teacher and coach in Hutchinson before that. His is a cool, laid-back presence. He wears tinted glasses, a beard, and has a thinning mane that falls past his shoulders. He has a stocky build and, on Friday, wore jeans and a corduroy work shirt. He looks like his old job was setting up drum kits for Whitesnake.
But as a roadie for the Department of Commerce instead, his late nights are assembled of tamer ingredients: Typically, Walter pulls the bus into a Walmart parking lot, lays an air mattress down in the narrow aisle between resume stations, puts a DVD on the big screen TV, and then drifts off until morning. 
“The reason we do all this is we want to get out to the rural areas where they don’t have access. We’ll go set up and spend a day in the community, just so people can come in and register on KansasWorks[.com]. That way they don’t have to drive into a workforce center. Or maybe someone doesn’t have the transportation.
“We try to help as much as we can. Because, you know, the name of the game is: We come around to help people get employed. My main goal is to make sure these guys get back on track.”
Shawn Young crossed the parking lot and climbed the metal steps into the KansasWorks bus. A heavy rain rattled down on the roof. Young tugged at the damp patches on his T-shirt and took a seat at the computer station nearest the door.
“Hey — you all right, man?” asked Walter.