Nearly 150 applicants turned out Thursday, Jan. 3 for the chance to apply for 25 jobs that a Silicon Valley tech company is offering when it starts operations here in Clarksdale later this month.
There was a line of people waiting an hour before the start of the People Shores Job Fair at the company’s location at the former home of the Clarksdale/Coahoma County Chamber of Commerce on Desoto Avenue.
“There was a big crowd before we even opened the door,” said Mitzi Woods, who is the workforce director for the Delta Workforce Area within the South Delta Planning District based in Greenville.
“These were huge numbers for one employer,” Woods said of the 144 people who had filled out applications by noon Thursday. “This shows that people are wanting to work.”
Aparna Gole, who is with the People Shores main office in San Jose, Calif., and was present at Thursday’s event, said the company was “happy and overwhelmed with the response we’ve gotten.”
People Shores is a for-profit social enterprise with a charter to bring technology-driven jobs to economically challenged areas of the United States. During its announcement in December, the company said they had plans to hire 200 people within the first two years of operation in Clarksdale.
The company has a planned start date of Jan. 17 to begin training its interns. The interns will be paid $8 per hour during their internship, which will last two months and be held at the People Shores office at 1540 Desoto Ave.
The intern training will consist of 50 to 60 hours learning base skills (such as work readiness, communication skills, computer basics and life skills) and 250 to 270 hours of business process skills (which will involve such things as customer service, business process basics, accounting fundamentals, Quickbooks/Quicken and quality assurance process).
At the end of the training period, permanent offers will be made to those interns who complete 320 hours of skill training and an assessment.
Clarksdale resident Eddie Cole was one of those applicants at Thursday’s Job Fair. He played professional football from 1979-80 and is currently a youth motivator and also involved in the insurance business. He has hopes for a better future for Clarksdale and he believes People Shores can help deliver on that.
“I want to see Clarksdale do good,” said Cole, who was born and raised in Clarksdale. “I want to see the people who love Clarksdale like I do step up and take an active role in making this community a better place to live.”
A key aspect of the People Shores mission is that they train people and help them acquire skills.
Fellow Clarksdale resident Londynn Jones is a 2012 graduate of Clarksdale High School and also holds degrees from Coahoma Community College in criminal justice and from Delta State University in social justice.
As a kid he had a desire to be a judge, Jones said, and he said he’s always “had a profound passion for criminal justice.” For the past year, he’d been serving as a correctional officer with the Mississippi Department of Corrections.
He said it’s somewhat difficult to find a good job in the Delta.
“Education is the best way out of poverty-stricken communities,” Jones said. “It’d be more difficult without an education.”
Jones said he heard about the job fair from a relative. Once he went online to find out more about the company, his desire to land a job with People Shores only increased.
Jones said he was impressed with the company’s “promotion of all social classes” and their way of “caring for all people, individually.”
Looking around at the nearly full room of applicants, Jones said he realizes there is a lot of competition for the initial jobs being offered by People Shores.
He said he had plans to take the Career Readiness Certification test being offered Tuesday, Jan. 8 and Thursday, Jan. 10 at the Coahoma Community College Workforce Development Center.
The CRC test takes about four hours to complete and, at the end, the applicant is classified into one of four categories: bronze, silver, gold and platinum. Each category corresponds with a certain skill level.
People Shores was seeking those with silver level status. Out of the 144 applicants at Thursday’s fair, approximately 25 of them had taken the CRC test. Those who had their CRC on Thursday were able to go ahead and interview with the People Shores staff. The others were able to fill out an application and schedule a date to take the CRC exam.
Officials with the college’s workforce development center said additional testing dates will be set up in addition to the Jan. 8 and 10 exam dates.
Among those agencies taking part in Thursday’s Job Fair were the Coahoma Community College Workforce Development Center, the Governor’s Job Fair Network, the WIN Job Center, the Mississippi Department of Human Service, and the City of Clarksdale. There were approximately 15 people from the various agencies assisting and People Shores had three representatives present at Thursday’s Job Fair.
