Block Club, BUILD host workforce event 

Block Club Chicago, in partnership with BUILD Chicago, hosted an all-day workforce development and career fair Saturday to provide resources to help young people seeking jobs with drafting resumes, professional headshots, mock interviews and much more. 

“Together We Build: West Side Workforce Development and Career Fair with Block Club and BUILD Chicago” was held at BUILD’s Austin headquarters. It included a visit from Mayor Brandon Johnson, a panel discussion, speed networking sessions and a professional attire closet. 

Highlighted by their past reporting, Block Club recognized that the West Side is becoming a hub for community-led workforce development after decades of disinvestment and systemic barriers. So, Block Club gathered some West Side providers and organizations who are hiring for an event “aimed at strengthening pathways to employment and expanding access to opportunity on the West Side,” according to Block Club. 

“The best way to build safe and affordable communities is through investment,” Johnson said at the event. Those investments must have a presence in the community so the community knows that those opportunities really do exist for them, he added. 

“You can tell a lot about a community based upon how the young people are,” Johnson said. “If the young people are not well, then that has more to do with the adults than it does the young people.” 

The phenomenon known as “teen takeovers” ramps up typically in the warmer summer months, is organized quickly over social media, and can end in violence or even fatal gunfire, according to an investigation by the Chicago Tribune. Some have suggested the problem is because young people have nowhere else to go. 

Johnson has responded by helping provide summertime job opportunities for youth and newer additions like free membership to city YMCAs for people ages 12 to 18, according to the Tribune. 

According to Johnson, the top four neighborhoods where young people were hired in past summers were in the areas with the greatest decline in violence. During Johnson’s administration, the neighborhood that has hired the most young people is Austin, with over 1,800 placed in employment, he said. 

“Let’s continue to build the safest, most affordable big city in America by investing in people,” Johnson said. 

More than 30 community partner organizations showed up, including Austin Weekly News, as well as locally and nationally focused groups, ranging from Pink Hard Hatz Construction, LLC to JPMorgan Chase. 

“They’ve done a great job at getting all these resources in one room,” said DeAnna Williams, senior talent acquisition lead at Skills for Chicago. 

Skills for Chicago is a nonprofit organization based in downtown Chicago that helps connect underrepresented job seekers to their employee partners and acts as the middleman between the client and a candidate. 

Williams said she was able to make connections with some of the resources there that she did not know were available. 

Several job candidates stopped by and two of them even completed applications, she said. 

“It’s always great when they take the time to log on, create a candidate profile and actually apply for a role,” Williams said. 

Many of the candidates who attended were able to get something out of the fair. 

“It’s been really fruitful,” said Chaise Dancy, a digital marketing and visual content specialist who came to the event in search of a job. “One of the most fruitful that I’ve been to.” 

Dancy made sure to walk up to every table but did not initially think that some of them would be interesting. However, she said there was something she could take away from every organization, whether it was an opportunity outside what they were offering or building connections through networking. 

The event was put on with support from the Pritzker Pucker Family Foundation and IMC Chicago Charitable Foundation. 

“We’re grateful to all of the partners and vendors here that are prepared to hire the incredible talent that we have here in Chicago,” Johnson said. “We do have the best workforce in the best freaking city in the world.” 

Emma Bradford is an intern for NEWSWELL CHICAGO through Report for America’s Local News Internship Program.