PACOIMA : Students Get Chance to Market New Skills

With a high school diploma within reach, former dropout La Tonya Greathouse-Kelly joined scores of Pacoima Skills Center students in testing the employment waters during a first-ever job fair Wednesday.

Greathouse-Kelly, a mother of four who will graduate from the center’s continuation school in June, failed to land a job offer from the dozen employers who participated in the Job Expo ’93.

But the 36-year-old Pacoima resident was grateful for the experience and the contacts that she made.

“I’m leaving off my resume and getting a lot of information,” said Greathouse-Kelly, who carried a plastic bag filled with brochures and handouts from government agencies and private employers such as Price Pfister.

The job fair was open to the center’s 500 students who are enrolled in job training courses such as word processing and welding and who are working toward their high school diplomas.

Administrators say the event was designed to help the students, many of them unemployed, translate their new job skills into jobs. “The ultimate goal is to get these people back into productivity,” said Rudy de Leon, a counselor at the center, which is run by the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Cindy Haiduk, an area recruiter for the Kaiser-Permanente in Panorama City, could not promise anyone a full-time job, but she encouraged the students to apply for on-call positions for general office work and nursing that average one or two days a week.

“There are lots of possibilities here,” Haiduk said.