MYRTLE BEACH -- Again this year, the Myrtle Beach Area Hospitality Association will not host a spring job fair. Last year's job expo was also cancelled. Association president Stephen Greene cites a lack of interest by employers and new ways for companies to seek job candidates on their own.
In its heyday, the annual expo matched hundreds of local employers with thousands of job seekers.
But Greene says the job fair was expensive to put on, costing up to $10,000, and as the economy turned bad, fewer employers needed it. Only 37 showed up at the last fair in 2009. Plus, he says, there are new ways today for employers to find job applicants.
"Obviously many of them now use the Internet and their own job expos to accomplish that same issue."
But job seekers like Bill Foster of Myrtle Beach say applying for jobs online doesn't really cut it.
"You need to talk to somebody face to face rather than a telephone answering machine or the Internet," Foster said.
Without a job expo, how do you get face to face contact? It's not easy. Other job seekers say even if you get a potential employer on the phone - and that's a big if - it's hard to land an interview.
"I'd rather talk to somebody face to face instead of over the phone because they can see how you really look and how you can present yourself to them," said Lofennie Frinks of Horry County.
While many employers will only accept applications online, job service officials say some job seekers aren't very Internet savvy.
"Then you have a lot of people, their complaint is that when they do put the applications online they never hear anything back," said Sheila Daniels, an employment services supervisor at SC Employment Services.
Greene says he recognizes it's tough for the jobless to meet potential employers, but the job fair just wasn't the best way to do it.
"We also recognize that it was so hard to get any companies there and we had companies that were there that may have one, two, three jobs and several hundred people trying to fill that job."
Greene says if the unemployment rate falls very low again, and enough hospitality association members request it, they'll consider bringing the job expo back, but for now, it's not worth it.
About 7,500 people showed up for the last hospitality association job fair in 2009.
