Earlier this week, hundreds of job seekers gathered for the Yolo County Job Fair at Woodland Community College.

The fair took place from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. inside WCC’s Community Room, located at 2300 E. Gibson Road. It featured various job booths offering opportunities in a wide range of fields, including customer service, information technology (IT), healthcare, sales, food service, media, manufacturing, agriculture, transportation, education, warehousing, hospitality, and more.

Faisal Alfatly, HHSA program coordinator, shared that the turnout was exceptional, as HHSA staff welcomed over 600 job seekers, emphasizing the importance of in-person meetings between employers and job seekers at these events.

“I think this is an exceptional turnout, we’ve seen this before with the last one we had in February, but this is great,” Alfatly said.

He appreciates the support from Woodland Community College, Woodland Chamber of Commerce, and the city of Woodland, as well as the Department of Health and Human Services for the event.“It’s really important because the community needs to have to connect with resources directly,” he said. “Usually, when you apply for a job, you’ll go online and submit the application. Some people are not savvy in technology, and they need to meet one-on-one with the employer, meet them in person, get applications, and work with them closely.”

A new booth and business featured at the Yolo County job fair is The BLVD!, originally from Bakersfield. The BLVD! will be opening its second location in West Sacramento this August.

Isiah Hernandez-Ramos, general manager for The BLVD, shared that the job fair turnout was very positive, and they are looking to hire 120 employees in various areas, including bartending, hostess, servers, technicians, and more.

“We’re a family entertainment center, we want everybody,” Hernandez-Ramos says. “We want our employees to look like our guests who are walking through the door.”

Elizabeth Acosta, office manager for Univision, was excited about the turnout and the opportunity to provide information to the community, as they were a new booth at the job fair.

“It’s great, this is the first time we’ve been here, and quite honestly, I didn’t expect the turnout to be this great,” Acosta expressed. “We need to be here more often. We need to be out here with our community.”

She mentions that Univision has positions available at the Sacramento station as an activation technician, as well as other open positions in the Bay Area and Fresno stations, including sales department roles, sales executives, and multimedia journalists.

Kyle Sakurada, a recruiter for the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, was also surprised by the turnout and had a large number of applicants interested.

“There’s quite a bit of people at this career fair, which is surprising for a community college,” Sakurada said. “Normally, there’s not as much foot traffic as there is right now, but the turnout has been really good. We ran out of pamphlets pretty quickly, which means there are a lot of people.”

Sakurada shares that they have a variety of emergency services roles available in areas such as disaster assistance, emergency preparedness, as well as administrative and clerical roles.

He believes job fairs like this are important, as they provide opportunities for people who may not always know what to look for and can help them find suitable jobs.

“Sometimes students don’t really know what to look for, or what they’re looking for, in the sense of looking for a career,” he says. “They’re just finishing an important time in their life, which is graduating from college, and meeting with a recruiter like ourselves face-to-face allows them to answer questions and hopefully ease their kind of intimidation that comes with applying for a full-time job.”

Other employers participating in the job fair include Adams Group Inc., ALTA California Regional Center, Always Best Care Senior Services, Balance Staffing, BMO Bank, Cache Creek Casino Resort, California Conservation Corps, California Department Of Water Resources, California Governors Office Of Emergency Services, California Human Development, California Public Utilities Commission, California Victim Compensation Board, CALTRANS, Center For Workers’ Rights, Childcare Careers, CommuniCare+OLE, Courtyard Healthcare, Department Of Consumer Affairs, Department Of Finance, Department Of Housing & Community Development, Department Of State Hospital — Napa, Empower Yolo, KUVS Univision Sacramento, LUDY’S BBQ And Catering and LUDY’S Fine Catering, Michael’s Transportation Service, Inc, Natomas Charter School, Northern California Construction Training, Nugget Market, Partners Personnel, PGP International, Inc., Pride Industries, The BLVD, The Plus Group, Inc., U.S. Army, UC Davis Temporary Employment Services, United and Guided Organization, United States Postal Service, We Care 4 Yolo, Yolo County IHSS Public Authority, Yolo Crisis Nursery and YoloWorks! Programs.