Job seekers take advantage of parks commission job fair

About 350 jobs were available during Saturday’s job fair hosted by Niagara Parks Commission at its Legends on the Niagara Golf Complex in Niagara Falls. The commission, one of the region’s largest employers with more than 1,700 full-time and seasonal employees, hosted the annual event to showcase the seasonal job opportunities that exist within the agency each year. It provided job seekers an opportunity to connect directly with various departmental hiring managers, while representatives from Niagara Parks’ human resources department were on hand to help answer any questions. The 350 available positions were available in culinary, retail, attractions, parks, golf, heritage and transportation departments. Niagara Falls resident Jaxen Nilsson said he dropped off resumes in attractions and retail, “possibly getting a cashier job at Table Rock.” “It gives me a good amount of opportunities for having an entry level job,” said the 15-year-old. Nilsson said he’s considering a post-secondary education to become a chemical engineer, but that a Niagara Parks position would “get me a little bit of work experience” prior to making that decision. Niagara Falls resident Elliot Brownford said he’s “open to anything” and was impressed by how many positions were available in so many departments. The 19-year-old said he would like to become a gaming developer, but would be interested in taking a full-time position with Niagara Parks if an opportunity became available. Reegan McCullough, chief executive officer of Niagara Parks, said the agency tried something new with this year’s job fair as officials were able to hire people “right on the spot.” He said it would be conditional because officials would still have to do reference checks. “We’re trying the conditional offer so we can move through the process a little more readily and hopefully it will work well for the individuals, too.” McCullough said of the more than 1,700 positions at Niagara Parks, about 300 are full time and the rest are seasonal. He said most of the applicants at the job fair are high-school or post-secondary students. “We’re also recruiting what we call provincial offence officers that help with the traffic flow, directing traffic in Queen Victoria Park and so on. This year we’re actually hiring more of those individuals, so a lot of them come from colleges.” Niagara Parks also welcomed people who qualified to consider a student co-op or an apprentice cook placement. “We’re the highest employer in terms of apprenticeship cooks on an annual basis in Ontario, so we take that quite seriously,” said McCullough. He said Saturday’s job far also featured break-off rooms where job seekers could speak one-onone with department lead hands or someone from human resources. McCullough said seasonal positions at Niagara Parks are “quite coveted” by locals who look at it as a “huge opportunity to either start a career or to get a well-paying summer position.” “Last year we had over 8.2 million paying visitors to our retail, culinary and attractions and if you like meeting people and providing assistance, it’s a huge opportunity.”