By HEIDI ULRICHSEN
Jesse Legault stands in a line stretching least 20 people long, waiting to hand his resume to representatives from Xstrata Nickel.
A similarly long line has formed at the other end of the room at the booth for Vale Inco. Dozens of other young men and women also buzz around booths for mining supply and service sector businesses, picking up pens and business cards.
Legault, a 21-year-old Cambrian College industrial mechanic student, was just one of 400 people to attend a mining employment and career fair at Tom Davies Square. The fair, entitled Mining:Your Business, was funded by Employment Ontario.
“It gives you a chance to get your resume in and to see everyone's face,” said Legault. “I don't think I'll get a job in my field for the summer, but I think when I'm done my whole program I have a pretty good chance of getting on with one of the large mining companies.”
Besides Vale Inco and Xstrata Nickel, the fair also had booths from Sudbury mining supply and service companies, educational institutions and employment agencies.
“People always think of mining as being the big companies - Vale Inco or Xstrata Nickel. But the reality is there is an economic cluster in Sudbury of the mining supply and service sector,” said Sharon Murdock, executive director of the Sudbury & Manitoulin Workforce Partnerships Board.
“There's shortages all over the place. The mining sector are pulling a lot of the experienced personnel out of the supply and service sector.”
Murdock, one of the organizers of the fair, invited high school, college and university students, as well as unemployed or underemployed people taking advantage of employment agencies.
Companies with booths were asked to provide information on current job vacancies within their organizations. Those manning the booths were also asked to post a piece of paper outlining their own career paths.
“It shows that you might have put yourself through college or university by flipping hamburgers, but that's just how you started,” Murdock said.
“But then you ended up doing X, and now you're doing Y, and you never thought you'd end up doing that when you were in high school. It shows people that even though you're in a job now where you're not challenge, maybe you could try something else.”
Most mining companies require a two-year technical college program plus six months of work experience before they will hire new employees, said Murdock. Some mining supply and service sector companies will hire those who have only earned a high school diploma, she said.
Andre Ducharme, inside/customer sales representative at Equipment World, was supervising a booth for his company. Equipment World is a material handling, storage and packaging systems company headquartered in Thunder Bay, and with branch offices in Sudbury and Sault Ste. Marie.
Mechanics and other skilled tradespeople are sorely needed by the company, said Ducharme.
“It's very competitive. The big companies are able to recruit a lot more quickly than we can,” he said.
