MOLINE, Ill. — Tyson Foods Inc. will be hosting a job fair from 10am until 6pm at the TaxSlayer Center in Moline on Wednesday, May 5th. It's the first time the company has tried their hand at hosting their own career event, and they hope it will help them reach a hard-to-find labor pool.
Masks will be required for this indoor event and resumes are encouraged for anyone who wishes to apply at the fair. Interpreters in Spanish, French, Burmese and Arabic will be on site, as well as current employees to help answer any questions.
All positions will be for in-person work at Tyson's plant in Joslin, Illinois. The company says they're looking to fill several full and part-time positions across many departments.
"We have so many career opportunities out here," said Amy Myrtue, the complex's human resource manager. "We're looking for scale techs for our new, state-of-the-art building that we're building for warehousing. We're looking for general production workers, hides, maintenance, just all across the board."
The Joslin location has open jobs in their general production, freezer, hides, warehouse and parts departments, and are additionally searching for heavy skilled operators, maintenance technicians, automation technicians, FSQA technicians and PBX shag drivers. You can find a full list of openings and shifts here.
Signing bonuses will be offered for most of the positions open at Wednesday's fair. Most of those are $1,000.
Typically, Tyson would attend larger career events with other vendors, but tell News 8 they're trying out a "solo" fair to see if they can reach more workers. The Joslin location has remained open throughout the pandemic, but has dealt with waves of unemployment that entire time.
"It's not just one industry, it's across the entire nation right now," said Myrtue. "Last year at this time, Rock Island County was around 18-17% unemployment rate and now it's about 6%. But we are all still feeling the effects of Covid, unfortunately, and I think we are all looking for the labor pools that are out there."
Myrtue speculates that lack of knowledge of the plant has contributed to Tyson's applicant-shortcomings over the last year. She hopes Wednesday's career fair will help change that.
The Joslin location chose to host their event at the TaxSlayer Center in Moline because it's centrally located and along a bus route, making it easy for applicants to get to.