By Billy Davis

More than 1,300 job seekers distributed 1,622 résumés at the July 14 Northwest Mississippi Area Job Fair at the Batesville Civic Center, according to statistics gathered at the event.

Forty-six employers registered to find employees and conducted 402 on-site interviews. A total of 333 job offers were made.

“I saw a lot of smiling faces,” said Adam Todd, who heads the Mississippi Governor’s Job Fair Network.

 Todd said he spoke to a job seeker named Nathan who had attended the job fair to visit Tunica employer Schulz Xtruded Products.

“Nathan said he had been e-mailing his résumé to Schulz but never heard back, even though he knew he had the skill set they were looking for,” said Todd.

“What he found out was they had been dumping it because he had worked for one week at a job and two weeks at another job,” Todd further explained. “But when he got to the job fair, he explained those were temporary jobs and he got set up for an interview.”

Job Fair organizers project 817 hirings during the year after the fair, according to Todd.