Success Story: Talent Connect Expanding Representation of CEG Investors at Career Fairs

With both the regional and national economies running at full employment and intensifying the competition for talent, the Center for Economic Growth (CEG) is aggressively expanding its efforts to attract highly skilled workers to the Capital Region. This year CEG’s Talent Connect program is quintupling the number of career fairs throughout the Northeast that it is attending on behalf the CEG’s investors.

Talent Connect staff last year started attending career fairs to build awareness of the job and educational opportunities available in the Capital Region, targeting workers interested in relocating. Already this year, Talent Connect has attended eight of the 20 scheduled career fairs in New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut.

For each event:

•   Talent Connect outreaches to investors to learn whether there are any specific job openings for which they would like Talent Connect staff to recruit.

•   Talent Connect staff manages a booth that highlights the region’s key industries, recreational assets, lifestyle and higher education opportunities.

•   Prospective recruits are directed to the website ceg.org/nycareers that lists CEG investors with employment opportunities and provides links to their job openings pages through which applications can be submitted.

•   After a prospective recruit notifies staff of his or her application for a position (by emailing a résumé to nycareers@ceg.org), Talent Connect will contact that employer’s human resources personnel.

•   On a case-by-case basis, Talent Connect will directly send a résumé to CEG investors’ human resources personnel and the area’s three recruiting firms that invest in the organization: Linium Recruiting, Fusco Personnel and Walrath Recruiting.

With many CEG investors interested in either hiring veterans or enrolling them in educational programs, Talent Connect will be making multiple trips to Fort Drum for its quarterly career fairs. Talent Connect staff will also attend a career fair at Fort Drum that is exclusively open to New York employers and another at the Albany Stratton VA Medical Center.

To attract other top tech talent, Talent Connect next fall will represent investors at the Times Union Technology and Manufacturing Job Fair in Albany as well as at career fairs at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Rochester Institute of Technology and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Within the Capital Region, Talent Connect will attend eight career fairs, as well as two in the neighboring Berkshires.

“When we go outside of New York, a lot of people don’t know we have this much to offer so we talk about the economic landscape and the region’s unmatched quality of life,” said Talent Connect Program Director Joanne Cornell.

All CEG members have access to Talent Connect services. To schedule a New Hire Navigation, or to learn how Talent Connect can help your business attract skilled workers, call Program Manager Joanne Cornell at 518-465-8975, ext.222 or email her at JoanneC@ceg.org. Learn more about Talent Connect here.