Kamara Pettiford served five tours of duty with the US Army in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait. She’s bright, personable and attractive, served her country for seven years and has been out of work since May.

One issue is her lack of a college diploma. “It’s hard to get a degree with multiple deployments …” she told me. “Everytime you get started in class you get called up again.”

Kamara is working with the NY State Department of Labor to get tuition assistance and go back to school to pursue a career in criminal justice. She’s also working with a Veteran’s counselor to find work near her Brooklyn home in the interim.

Kamara is one of thousands of veterans showing up at the USS Intrepid Sea Air & Space Museum in New York City for the Operation HIRE Veterans Career Fair.

More than 75 employers have more then 2000 positions to fill. Many of the jobs are entry level. Some of the prospective employers include the NY State Police, FBI, Amtrak, Coca Cola, Pepsi and Fed-Ex. Wayne Packer from Lowe’s Home Improvement Stores is looking to fill dozens of positions.

Wayne and others say those who’ve served make excellent employees, but nearly 15% of the state’s Vets are out of work, a stat this job fair hopes to adjust downward.

Tamara says this is the first time she’s been unemployed since she was 15. “It’s frustrating at times” she told a group arriving for the event “but I’ve sacrificed too mich during my time in the military to give up hope.”

Okay so here’s a bit of a pickle we came across while On the Job Hunt: human resource departments are cutting back on personnel.  Meantime, human resource workers are being inundated with electronic resumés at a rate that has them buried in electronic paperwork.  At Denver Health, one of the area’s largest hospitals, “we get about 6700 applications a month” online, says Mark Genkinger, Human Resources Director of Recruitment.  Genkinger says it’s impossible to go through each one and this hospital doesn’t have one of the more sophisticated ‘applicant tracking systems’ some corporations use to sift out the contenders from the less qualified.   We asked Genkinger how someone stands out in a field of thousands.  He says, first of all, don’t send out the same resumé to a bunch of different openings.  Tailor your resumé to fit each position.  For example, Genkinger says, “…they may say, ’seeking to obtain management position’ but they’re applying for an individual contributor position.  Right then and there, I don’t need to read any further because I know I have hundreds, if not thousands of resumés still to review that may target those specific positions”.  Andrew Hudson, who helps people find jobs through his website, AndrewHudsonJobsList.com in Colorado, agrees.  Hudson also told us that if you’re unemployed, you still have a full-time job being the “Chief Marketing Officer for Yourself”. That means, Hudson explains, that you have to get offline to get yourself noticed.  Hudson says, “…it seems cliché, but networking is key.  Seventy percent of folks who get jobs, have gotten jobs as a result of who they know and being able to go to networking parties put on by associations that reflect your industry.”  Still not convinced? Consider this, in June of this year, more than 65 million Americans visited a career-related website.  The message we got while on this story was, much of the world may be in the state-of-the-art electronic age, but throwing back to the out-of-style, get-off-your tail age could be ingenious.  In other words, don’t overestimate the power of the internet while underestimating the impression of good ol’ snail mail. As we were told by a hiring agent who sees hundreds of e-mails a day, “What differentiates a candidate is an old-fashioned card in the mail that’s handwritten, that just says thank you for the interview.  It makes a big difference.”

Aaaaaannddd, they’re OFF!  That is the declaration that hasn’t been heard at historic Hialeah Park since 2001, when the track shut down.  But Hialeah, Florida’s lush and tropical landmark is about to reopen.   Thanksgiving weekend will see a return of horses and gamblers in the stands, which needed all kinds of work to get back into shape.  150 construction workers have been installing the plumbing, painting, and electrically wiring this place in double shifts to make the deadline.  That’s a lot of sweat — literally.  It’s still 85 degrees in South Florida, and Hialeah is a couple dozen miles from the beach, so, no ocean breeze like you get in Miami Beach to cool you down a notch.  Out in the center of the track, there’s a flash of pink that the horses will be sprinting by.  It’s a flock of pink flamingos, and as local lore has it, they’re the descendents of the pink flamingos made famous in the opening of the hit 80s tv show Miami Vice.  Crocket and Tubbs are long gone, but the developers of Hialeah Parks reopening can already sense the return of the good times.  And this place does look spiffy, freshly painted and polished.  And in front of the main entrance, little kids will learn the history here.  A big statue of Citation, the triple crown winner who raced here on its way to becoming a horse racing legend, will welcome all spectators on their way in.

It’s the biggest company you’ve probably never heard of, and today, according to Governor Bobby Jindal, CenturyLink is hiring. Up until this year, CenturyLink was CenturyTel, a company of about 6,000 employees based in a sleepy corner of Northeast Louisiana. Last year, CenturyTel announced they were buying Kansas-based Embarq., a company three times the size of CenturyTel. The new combined company has 20,000 employees/workers. CenturyLink is now the fourth largest communications company in the country. Not bad for a little telephone company that started in someone’s living room back in the ’30s.

Governor Bobby Jindal announced today that CenturyLink has agreed to stay in Monroe through 2019 and will add 350 jobs. The announcement couldn’t come at a better time for the region. Unemployment in the region hovers around 10%, well above the state average. and traditionally, this has been one of the poorest parts of the country. Almost everyone I talked with today mentioned how devastating it would have been if CenturyLink were to have relocated. It’ll be interesting to see how the company grows from here. Walk around CenturyLink headquarters and it feels more like a family business than a future Fortune 500 company. Employees greet each other like they’re at church and call out to one another by first name. They all turned out for the governor’s announcement in the atrium and then celebrated with a lunch of turkey and all the fixings. It may be just a tiny blip of good news in a sea of bad economy stories, but it’s happening in a place where they can really use it.

Boeing V. Union

When Boeing recently decided to build the second assembly line for its 787 Dreamliner plane in Charleston, South Carolina, the politicians and union members in Washington State howled in protest. ‘How could they?’ ‘Was there no loyalty to Seattle?’ Boeing explained the decision by saying it came down to labor stability and long-term competitiveness. Translation: No more costly strikes and more flexibility from its labor force. Company officials decided that those goals were not attainable as long as the jobs were held by members of the International Association of Machinists. And after getting huge tax breaks from the South Carolina Legislature, Boeing bolted.

The IAM says the company was only negotiating with the union in order to get a sweeter deal from Charleston. They point to the fact that Boeing hired a lobbyist months ago and bought land adjacent to an existing facility where the new plant will be built. The union, however does not acknowledge that it would not give Boeing everything it wanted in exchange for the 3,000 jobs. The company wanted a 10-year, no strike contract. IAM offered an 8-year contract. Boeing wanted to give 2% annual pay raises. The union wanted 3% plus $15,000 worth of bonuses over the next 6 years. Also, the IAM was asking for a guarantee from Boeing that it would build all future new planes in Washington state and demanded that Boeing remain neutral when the union tried to organize in plants that are currently non-union. In other words, the union wanted to tie the company’s hands for years to come. Boeing would have none of it.

And so a trend that we have seen in the auto industry and the aerospace industry continues … manufacturing jobs leaving strong union states for the non-union South. Did the union shoot itself in the foot? Perhaps. The new assembly line in South Carolina makes it more likely that when Boeing has to build a replacement for the 777 or the 737 it will leave Seattle for Charleston or elsewhere.

The move by Boeing does come with substantial risk, however. While it would not have to build much in the way of new infrastructure in Seattle, Boeing does have to construct a 600,000 square foot plant for the 787 assembly. That will cost an estimated $1.5 billion. In addition Boeing will have to train a whole new workforce to build it’s most important new plane in over a decade and a plane that is already 2 years behind schedule.