BP Career fair focuses on learning

There was more than simply job-seeking and job-filling going on at the Blooming Prairie Area Chamber of Commerce’s third annual career fair:

There was plenty of learning going on, as well, and not just by the students.

“We don’t do a very good job in our display of talking about the support functions” available at Metal Services of Blooming Prairie, said Kurt Schrom, CEO of the custom metal fabrication company.

He fielded questions about how long the 40-year-old business had been in town, “and I say, ‘well, a lot longer than you’ve been alive,’” Schrom laughed.

“Some of the kids are interested in the trades, and they’re asking good questions,” he said, but there are also opportunities in accounting, purchasing and office work at Metal Services.

Sharing those options “will be the takeaway for us,” Schrom said.

Ryan Nelsen was with a group of Hayfield High School students who came to last week’s event, which was held at the Blooming Prairie High School gym.

He and his friends spent some time talking with Trooper Charlie Colby, of the Minnesota State Patrol, though Nelsen doesn’t have his sights set on law enforcement.

“I’m thinking of being a nurse anesthetist,” the sophomore said, “but I’m just looking around, seeing what’s possible.”

It was the first career fair Nelsen had attended, “but I’m still pretty focused. All my family works in the medical field.”

There were medical groups represented among the 31 businesses that attended, said Karen Peterson, executive director of the BPACC.

It was the biggest job fair yet, “but we have more space here, too,” she said.

In addition to the HHS sophomores and juniors, students in grades 10-12 at BPHS also attended.

“They’re getting to know there are more jobs than they’ve thought about,” Peterson said of the 260 students who filed through. “There are a lot of different industries represented here today.”

Colby, who was filling in with the State Patrol’s recruitment program, said the majority of sophomores aren’t necessarily thinking about careers – yet – but seniors were asking “a lot of questions about our agency, specifically.”

Though not as local as the Blooming Prairie Police Department or Steele County Sheriff’s Office, “there’s different responsibilities” at MSP, Colby said, including options like aviation, canine programs and commercial vehicle enforcement.

According to the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, the state has more than 1,000 open law enforcement positions, thanks in large part to a growing number of retirements, effects of the pandemic and the increasing scrutiny of policing practices.

That’s part of the reason Kristin Sailer and Megan Norbeck, of Steele County Emergency Management, attended the career fair.

A big draw during the event was the department’s distracted driving simulator.

The students, said Sailer, who is the county’s emergency and risk management director, “are asking how to use it,” and several got behind the wheel.

“It’s to show them how drug and alcohol can impair their judgment,” she said, “and their vision, their decisions.”

Personnel with SCSO, BPPD and MSP “are all here,” Sailer said, “trying to promote anything that is involved in law enforcement.”

Annette Duncan, president of Steele County United Way, was also at the career fair – with a goal of making job-hunting more accessible.

“We specifically want to know what barriers to employment that they anticipate experiencing,” she said.

Some of the answers already received were no work experience, meeting new people, passing college, no driver’s license and the inability to get one.

That information will be compiled, analyzed and brought to the UWSC Strategic Impact Committee “to identify if there are any common themes around barriers in Blooming Prairie that we can start to address,” Duncan said.

“We sponsored the event here today,” she said, “because we want to make sure youth have the opportunities; our smaller communities don’t always get the same opportunities that Owatonna gets.

“Anytime we can help support them, we’re going to do that.”