PITTSBURGH -- They wore their best suits and some said their palms were sweating but 50 unemployed people from Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia made pitches for jobs in front of live TV cameras.
The 50 men and women, appearing on a local 'Job-A-Thon' program sponsored by KDKA-TV Thursday night, ranged in occupations from steelworkers to accountants but all had one thing in common -- they were out of work and hoping potential employers would be watching.
'You go out every day and every place you go they say there's nothing available and after you do that for awhile, it gets very discouraging,' Gary Pierson, 24, of New Freeport, Pa., said.
'And when you do find an opening, there's 200 people already waiting for the same job.'
Pierson said he was laid off in March from his two-year job as a machinery operator, and then an inspector for Picoma Industries' steel mill in Martins Ferry, Ohio.
Pierson, who said he grew up on a farm and operated bulldozers, dump trucks and farm machinery all his life, is looking for a job as a heavy equipment operator in a strip mine or factory.
He is currently collecting unemployment compensation and working part-time as a school bus driver.
Within the first hour of the two-hour-long show, the phone bank set up in the station's studio had taken calls from some 1,500 unemployed people seeking jobs, said spokeswoman Carolyn McClair.
In the same time period, 50 employers had called the studio offering jobs. An additional 300 employers had registered job openings with the station prior to the program, she said.
For many of the unemployed who showed up at the studio, the TV job application was something of a last resort.
'If nothing comes of this, I'm thinking of relocating somewhere down South -- some place like Florida,' Robert Lyle, 30, of Bovard, Pa., said.
Some applicants said the experience was a bit harrowing.
Bill Holmes, 36, a material control supervisor who has been out of work since May, said his interviewer 'threw me a curve.
'She said, 'I'm going to ask you what you're looking for,' and the first thing she asked me was, 'tell me about yourself,'' said Holmes, who declined to name his previous employer.
He said the 'job-a-thon' gave him the opportunity 'to get in contact with a lot of people you couldn't reach otherwise.'
