Area residents peruse potential job opportunities at Latrobe job fair

“Help Wanted” signs were displayed en masse Thursday at the Westmoreland County Community College Latrobe Education Center.

“This is great,” said Rebecca Davis of New Alexandria. “And it came at a perfect time for me.”

In the past year, Davis said she lost her job as an administrative assistant, where she worked for a decade, and recently got a job in another field, “but it just wasn’t the right fit for me and I left.”

“I decided to begin looking for a new job this week and saw in the paper they were having this, so I decided to come down to check it out. It’s been great,” Davis said.

Hoping to land another job as an administrative assistant in the nonprofit field, Davis came to the job fair with multiple copies of her resume and spent the morning meeting face-to-face with employers, discussing potential job opportunities.

Thirty-eight companies from the region — including banks, a brewery, contractors, health care facilities, hospitality centers, landscapers, nonprofit community organizations, manufacturing plants, nursing homes and restaurants — set up tables in the Depot Street facility to meet with potential employees and discuss job opportunities.

Mario A. Dominick, whose job as a food preparer for 16 years at an area community living facility was eliminated during the covid-19 pandemic, also attended the fair with a backpack full of resumes.

“I’m really looking for anything right now. I’m looking at all potential opportunities, and I thought I’d see what’s available,” Dominick said.

Dominick said his unemployment compensation benefit recently expired.

Randy Gounder, chief operating officer, and Kathleen Orr, a manager of ORRCO, a family-owned precision machining company that’s been in business for more than 75 years in nearby Salem Township, said they were looking for potential machinists.

“Business has been really picking up, and we’re looking to add about 25 more employees,” Orr said.

She noted that most of the company’s 25 employees have been there for 30 to 40 years.

Gounder noted that business decreased for a few months during the pandemic, but “we had workers painting the plant and performing maintenance so we could keep people employed.”

“We’re really looking for anyone with a mechanical aptitude,” Gounder said.

Depending on qualifications, employees could expect to make between $33,000 and $55,000, plus health insurance and a retirement plan.

Brad Herrle of LawnRx, a lawn fertilizing firm in Unity with seven employees, said the company was hoping to add two to three workers.

“I can’t explain it, but during the pandemic we really increased the number of clients we had. And with spring coming up, we want to add a few more lawn technicians to our company,” Herrle said.

Starting salary for those jobs ranges from $17 to $20 an hour, he said.

City Brewing Co. in Latrobe, operator of the former Rolling Rock brewery in Latrobe, also was looking for 50 to 60 workers to add to its new warehouse and distribution facility in the Regional Industrial Development Corp. Westmoreland Innovation Center in East Huntingdon Township, according to human resources representative Jennifer Dietrich.

The firm employs about 250 workers at the Latrobe plant.

Starting salaries for the warehouse, distribution and forklift operator positions were not disclosed.

Briana Tomack, president of the Greater Latrobe-Laurel Valley Chamber of Commerce, which cosponsored the fair with the PA CareerLink office near Youngwood, said planning for the job fair began in November.

“We thought after Christmas and the holidays would be a good time to hold this kind of an event with local firms who are looking for workers and a lot of people would be looking to get back to work,” Tomack said.

There were 7,900 jobless workers — as adjusted for seasonal hiring factors and defined as those still seeking work — in Westmoreland County in November, the most recent month for which the Department of Labor and Industry has employment data. That’s better than the 11,700 who swelled the ranks of the unemployed in November 2020.