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December 30, 2009
HighTechMaui Holiday Career Fair offers information for kama’aina to come home
The goal is to fit potential employees to job openings.
The Maui Economic Development Board’s 8th annual HighTechMaui Holiday Career Fair on Dec. 28 provided more than 230 hopeful job seekers with information about what it takes to qualify for technology-based positions.
 With 10 major tech operators, Maui County and University of Hawaii/Maui Community College offering information and advice, there was much to be digested — even for those who are in the process of upgrading their technical qualifications to meet employers’ requirements.
Looking over the flow of people visiting the employer tables, Maui Economic Development Board Program Director Leslie Wilkins observed there appeared to be a wide range of job seekers reflecting the economy and demonstrating the value of the Holiday Career Fair.
“The HighTechMaui Holiday Career Fair attracted the full spectrum of job seekers — from college students researching future options and internship to very seasoned professionals who have been affected by the economic downturn,” she said. “Our goal is to connect local companies with kama’aina talent. The Career Fair has proven to be a successful strategy in achieving that goal.”
Wilkins directs MEDB’s Women in Technology program, the lead sponsor for the event, in partnership with Kama’aina Careers and The Maui News, with support from the County of Maui and U.S. Department of Labor. The Holiday Career Fair held at the Ke Alahele Center in the Maui Research & Technology Park is just one of the ways for individuals trained in science, technology, engineering or math to get information on professional opportunities available on Maui. Others include the High Tech Maui site, the kama’aina come home site or directly from company Web sites.
Lianne Yoshida, Human Resources Manager for the Maui High Performance Computing Center, said the crowd seemed to include more older professionals looking for positions rather than large numbers of college students checking out their options with graduation ahead.
“We have one position open and we have a number of internships we are offering,” she said.
MHPCC has participated in the Holiday Job Fair since its inception and has a number of employees recruited through the event, she said. Success can be a matter of timing.
“It depends on the positions we have. Sometimes we have positions that are easy to fill; sometimes the requisites are so narrow, it’s difficult to find an individual with the specific skill sets,” she said.
 A recruiting team with Lockheed Martin was offering opportunities throughout the corporate operations, focused on internships available at four supercomputer centers LM is managing for the Department of Defense under the Next Generation Technical Services contract awarded last year. LM is collaborating with the DoD High Performance Computing Modernization Program Office, also represented at the Holiday Career Fair by Dr. Susan T. Brown from the DoD High Performance Computing Modernization Program, to provide internships to underrepresented students in the STEM community.
Michele Sauer, LM Senior Business Development representative, said their recruitment offerings expanded on the options offered within Maui Nui, providing students a chance to gain experience as interns while learning how they could fit in Lockheed Martin’s work settings. The effort had Mark Cooper, LM Chief Technical Officer, recruiting for several intern positions in Lockheed Martin’s DoD programs on the Mainland.
“It’s a try-before-you-buy on both sides. You learn whether this is the kind of work you want to do; we learn whether you have the technical capabilities we need,” Sauer said.
Under the NGTS contract, LM is managing supercomputer centers in Mississippi, Ohio and Maryland, but Sauer said the company also has internships available in its Oahu operations for students in computer science and physics.
 Maui-based LM representative Chancy Hopper said the company is supporting a number of programs in all of the military commands that will be utilizing interns in 2010 – with the selection of interns to begin in January since the positions will require security clearances.
Typically, Hopper said, an intern will be assigned to a mentor and a project, such as development of a software application for a system that LM is developing for a military program.
“It will give the student real experience in a workplace. They will prepare the assignment, do a presentation and learn what the outcomes are,” she said.
At the same time, she said the Hawaii operation does expect to be filling permanent positions as well, for technicians as well as for higher-end professionals.
“We’re familiar with what kinds of opportunities Hawaii need,” she added. “For what we’re doing here, we’re looking for anybody with engineering or physics, or some kind of business management skills.”
Boeing Site Coordinator Jerry Cornell said the company’s Hawaii operations will utilize a range of skill sets, from technicians and operations specialists to physicists, although he acknowledged much of the job growth will be on Oahu, where Boeing anticipates a significant demand for aeronautical technicians with the assignment of an F-22 squadron.
Cornell had high expectations for students attending UH-Maui Community College, noting that the UH-MCC campus is preparing to offer a four-year bachelor of applied sciences degree in engineering technology, emphasizing application over theory. The degree program will be offered beginning in fall 2010.
“It will provide students with the knowledge they need to do the work, although it will be very math intensive,” he said. “We’re very excited about the prospects of being able to hire students out of the program. We expect their students are going to be very competitive.”
That information emanating from the Career Fair may be what potential students such as Jon Matsui need. Matsui said he attended to learn most about the options available in the fields of information technology to build on the training he’s received with the Hawaii Air National Guard.
Through his military service, including deployment to Iraq, the Pukalani resident is eligible for education benefits and he said the fair provided basic information on what kind of work might be available in the field – and what further education he will need to attain the work he wants.
“Information technology is what I’ve done before. It’s what I want to do,” he said. “I just really haven’t had the opportunity for more training before.”
Similarly, William Schutte of Makawao said he understood better what educational routes he needed to take to become eligible for the careers being offered by tech companies.
“I learned what I have to do,” he said.
Jena Miller, a freshman majoring in industrial engineering at California Polytechnic University, already knows what she needs to do as well as what she wants to do and learned there were plenty of options among the companies at the Career Fair.
“I knew I wanted to be an engineer,” she said. “I thought of industrial engineering because everything involves industrial engineering. It’s designing, it’s working with machinery. It’s analyzing systems to improve efficiency. I really like it.”
The Baldwin High School graduate added that she felt she was well prepared for the engineering curriculum she is facing at Cal Poly by the advanced courses she was provided at her high school.
She also may be well timed for openings in the job market. Rob Judge, a project engineer with Goodfellow Brothers, acknowledged there are few immediate positions, but the company is expecting openings to occur in the year to come.
The civil construction company also offers internships.
“That’s really the best way to get to know someone, to see how they work with you,” he said.
“We are looking for engineers, which is a high tech profession,” said Carmel Patterson, Goodfellow Human Resources manager.
An applicant long out of high school and college, Michael Roberts of Pukalani, said he found he has fewer options as an experienced operations manager for utility systems. He was laid off after more than 40 years with utility companies in California and Maui.
Still, he had long conversations with several companies that may have had openings outside of Maui.
“I thought it was good, all the people are right here. You can talk to them and get answers,” he said.
Chemistry teacher Terry Lane, left on the sidelines with the Department of Education trimming rather than hiring, said he wasn’t offered any positions, but he thought there may be opportunities with companies such as Monsanto, which did have an information table, or other biotech businesses on Maui for whom the HighTechMaui table was able to provide him with contact information.
“There are some people I will need to contact,” he said.
Mary Gates, an information technologist on Maui because her husband was assigned to the island by the Air Force, said she was advised of several different openings in technology companies, and remained hopeful.
She had a broad range of experience in programming and security for IT systems, but she said she lacks expertise in any specialty – while it appeared positions now available required specialized knowledge.
“I’m hoping they will make more of my experience even if I don’t have the specialized skills,” she said.
8th Annual HighTechMaui Holiday Career Fair
Participating employers in the 2009 Holiday Career Fair were:
Akimeka LLC
Boeing LTS
County of Maui
Goodfellow Brothers
Hnu Photonics LLC
Kama'aina Careers
Lockheed Martin
Maui High Performance Computing Center
Monsanto
Oceanit
Pacific Disaster Center
State of Hawaii Workforce Development Division
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