Officials to hold job fair to find workers for facility

The facility expects to hire about 275 part-timers.
YOUNGSTOWN -- Youngstown convocation center officials are looking for upbeat, energetic and personable people to work part time at the facility.
Center officials expect to hire about 275 people for jobs including ticket takers, ushers, food service workers, security, parking attendants, housekeeping personnel and stagehands. The jobs pay between $6.50 and $11 an hour.
The center will host a job fair Oct. 10-12 at the Holiday Inn MetroPlex off Belmont Avenue in Liberty.
About a dozen center employees will interview people for all of the jobs except housekeeping personnel and stagehands from 4 to 10 p.m. Oct. 10 and 12. The job interviews for the other two categories are from 10 p.m. Oct. 11 to 1 a.m. Oct. 12.
"We selected those times because those are the typical hours those people are going to work at the center," said Matthew Hufnagel, the facility's director of sales and marketing. "If you can't make it to the job fair, you probably won't be able to do the job."
While 275 people will be hired, they won't all be working at the same time, he said. The 275 number is about 30 percent more part-timers than the arena needs, Hufnagel said. But it eliminates concerns of arena officials about being short-handed, and it allows flexibility for people who can't work every event, he said.
"There is a high interest level for these jobs," Hufnagel said. "For the jobs that deal with the public, we're looking for people with energy and a good positive outlook. For the backstage people, we want people with the skills to do work."
There to work
If prospective employees are under the impression they'll work a little bit and then sit down and watch the event, they are mistaken, he said.
"Your job is to help people," Hufnagel said. "If you don't do that, you'll probably last half a day."
Convocation center officials say they've already received about 200 applications from people interested in working at the facility. Those people as well as those who haven't filled out applications must attend the job fair to be considered for employment, he said.
Those attending the job fair must bring two forms of identification, Hufnagel said. They also must be patient because several hundred people are expected to show up for the job fair, and the line could be long, he said.
Before coming to Youngstown, Hufnagel worked at the First Arena in Elmira, N.Y., for five years as that facility's director of sales and marketing.
"We found that people who stuck were those who looked at the job as a fun thing to do," he said.
The arena is estimated to cost $45.38 million, and is to open Oct. 29. Crews began installing seats and dasher boards -- the boards around the hockey rink -- Thursday.