Hundreds chase 450 jobs at fair (From York Press)

Hundreds chase 450 jobs at fair

7:50am Friday 5th October 2012 in News By Dan Bean, dan.bean@thepress.co.uk

MP Nigel Adams

HUNDREDS of people attended the second annual Selby Jobs Fair where more than 450 positions were on offer.

More than 750 visitors went to the event at Selby College yesterday, with jobs, apprenticeships and work experience available with a variety of companies.

Damien Garvey visited the first fair after graduating from college, and was employed by Backup Technology. He returned yesterday to find more staff for the IT firm.

He said: “I had applied for some jobs online and didn’t really get anywhere, and there wasn’t a lot of variety.

“When I came to the fair last year, I had a chat with the staff, got an interview, and went from there.

“It’s quite a good demonstration of the fact that the fair works. My employers found me here and send me back to pick up more.”

Andy Doel is operations manager with Lytag which is building a unit at Drax to create aggregate for construction projects, and currently has 21 roles to fill.

He said: “This is the start of our recruitment campaign.

“I have been impressed by the level of interest, also by the level of people looking for roles, including people who had quite senior jobs and very good experience.”

Jess Peters started work experience at Savers in Selby last year, became an apprentice, and is now training to be a manager. She said: “It’s just lovely that people have opportunities like this in Selby.”

Elizabeth Hey, from Monk Fryston, was recently made redundant and said: “I think the fair was excellent. It was very informative, and people were very helpful. They could do with extending it over a two-day period.”

Mark Radford came to the fair from Goole, and said: “I read about it in the paper, so thought I would pop in.

“I think it’s brilliant, it’s a really good idea. It’s more geared towards young people, but there’s a range of roles and people here. At the end of the day, there’s not a lot of work out there, but it’s a good thing for Selby and the whole outlying area.”

Nigel Adams, MP for Selby and Ainsty, who organised the fair, said: “It’s exactly what I wanted to happen. It’s been a fabulous success so far according to the employers, and they have been very pleased with the standard of applicants.”