Job Fairs Booming As Firms Scramble for Workers.

Mark Seegel has been running a small engineering consulting company for 23 years. But this is the first time he's gotten so desperate for workers that he's resorted to participating in a job fair.

"Until last year, most of our employees had been with us since we started. But we've been raided by other companies. So here I am," said the engineer, a partner in Levine/Seegel Associates in Santa Monica.

Seegel and representatives from 60 other companies trekked to the Long Beach Convention Center last week to attend the NAACP Diversity & High Tech Career Fair. All of them were hoping to find a few good people to fill the vacancies eating away at their productivity. And it's not easy.

With a booming economy and miniscule unemployment, qualified workers are as scarce as snowballs in Santa Monica. In March, Los Angeles County's unemployment rate dipped to 5.4 percent.

And as that rate declines, the number of job fairs being staged in Los Angeles rises ever higher - as desperate employers hunt for workers.

The most desperate are the high-tech firms - some of which are actually calling up business schools and saying they want to hire half the graduating class.

Looking for e-employees

The Anderson School at UCLA held a job fair this year and the vast majority of attending companies were dot-coms. Twenty-five percent more companies participated than last year.

"They desperately need this type of event," said Alysa Polkes, director of the MBA Career Management Center at Anderson School at UCLA. "They are looking for an opportunity to find a bunch of people quickly."

At USC, the Marshall School of Business has held two job fairs this year. That is two more than it normally holds. "It is being driven by the fact that the labor market is so tight," said Tom Kozicki, director of the MBA Career Center at USC. "The problem MBAs are having is making the right decision, not finding a job. It is very different from what it was five years ago. If they got a job offer (back then), they took it."

Job fair organizers say their business is up 20 to 25 percent. Rick Holguin, president of T-Rex Productions in El Segundo, said he has added three new cities - Houston, New York City and Philadelphia - to his job fair lineup after companies requested them.

Shomex Productions officials, who organized the NAACP job fair in Long Beach, said their business is booming. Last year they produced 23 job fairs. This year that increased to 30 and there are already 35 set up for next year, said Lewis R. Shomer, president and CEO of Shomex. "What we're finding is, we're getting more employers," Shomer said.

Although some job fair organizers report that fewer prospective workers are attending such events, there were plenty of job hunters buzzing around the red-and-white booths inside the cavernous Long Beach Convention hall last week, where companies were touting their working conditions and tossing out promotional trinkets.

A few beefy members of the U.S. Border Patrol were distributing T-shirts. The recruiters at Pharmavite Corp. of Mission Hills dispensed Nature Made vitamins. Headhunters from SmithKline Beecham gave out rolls of Tums antacid tablets.

But the most desperate companies, the aerospace and engineering firms, were banking on sign-on bonuses to lure trained workers. One of those was Aerojet, which not only needs top-notch engineers but also employees who can get a security clearance to work on government projects.

Aerojet was offering job candidates 10 to 15 percent increases over their current salaries, moving expenses and a $2,000 to $15,000 sign-on bonus. Furthermore, the company has upped its employee referral bonus. This year, any employee who recommends someone who is later hired gets $3,000 to $5,000, compared to $2,000 to $4,000 last year.

"Our problem now is that our attrition rate is almost faster than our hiring rate," complained Wes Gaile, the company's engineering manager, who was sitting behind a table with two colleagues. After the Long Beach event, they were heading to two more job fairs: one in Santa Clarita and another in Orlando, Fla.

All types of workers needed

While Aerojet was searching for software engineering specialists, senior computer science analysts and technicians, companies like Mervyn's California were looking for the less technically educated folks, such as assistant store managers and retail employees. "We're pursuing every avenue we can," said a Mervyn' s representative who asked not to be named. "We've been using the Internet a lot in the last six months. We're using our own Web site to post job openings and posting jobs on monster.com and hotjobs.com."

Sifting through all these job offers were a slew of candidates who were either looking for a new career or seeking a better-paying job.

Kim Butler - a job-shopper who was loaded down with a promotional plastic Slinky, a purple mouse pad and a plastic bag stuffed with company literature - already has a job as a supervisor with a Long Beach insurance claims company. But after three years, she is ready for a change. "This is my first job fair this year," she said. "I'm still not looking looking, but checking out what's out there."