Eric Grisham was on Sheriff Mark Dannels radio program First Watch to talk about Arizona At Work in Sierra Vista.

When is the next hiring fair?

Eric Grisham: "Our spring hiring fair is coming up on March 23rd and 24th. We're going to team up with the Cochise College Career Team, and we're going to do a two-day event. The first day at the main campus of Cochise College in the Sierra Vista student union building. On the 24th, which is a Friday, we're going to do it at our location at the Cochise College Downtown Center.

What is the purpose of this two-day event?

Eric Grisham: "We want to try to help get all these college students find local jobs, local opportunities, to let them know there are opportunities for them here in Sierra Vista and Cochise County. Some of them may not want to go any further than Community College, so we give them a chance to find some employment as well.

Tell us about Arizona At Work Grant opportunities.

Eric Grisham: "We have our H1B1 grant still going, and we just got the green light from Pima County that we can do as many certifications as we want to for the IT and cyber world. At one point, they put a limit on it, so we actually had to turn people away because we were doing so many, but now we can do as many as we want. We can help people get their IT and cyber certifications, even associates degrees. To apply for that, all they've got to do is come into our office. Tuesday through Friday at 9:00 o'clock, we have our orientation slash introduction class; it's scheduled for an hour, and our instructor miss Sylvia will walk them through this process with the packet; this is what you need, this how to fill it out. If they qualify, they enroll in a class, and we pay the bill. We have these workforce grants out there, and we can pay for a lot of this training education. The key is it's got to be an end-demand job; anything in the medical world and anything in law enforcement education, those are all pretty much in-demand jobs.

What is the difference between a scholarship and this grant money?

Eric Grisham: "Apply for scholarships, that's free money to go to school, but we have under our grant programs, if you qualify, we have supportive services and those supportive services can be a wide variety of different stuff. Everybody's got a different case, different instance, but we've put gas in people's cars just to overcome barriers, for example. Get them to that education to get that job, and we want to try to remove all those barriers.

Can you help people find jobs?

Eric Grisham: "We have workforce specialists that can help people with their resumes. We even offer some interview with confidence classes and dressed for success. Every couple of weeks, I try to put together a job search because I know the struggles of how many different sites there are and how hard it is to find a job; the average is four to six months. The last job search was a week ago, and there were 11144 jobs in Cochise County, and then seven about 700 of them were in Sierra Vista alone, and that's everything from entry-level positions all the way up.

How do we get ahold of Arizona at work?

Eric Grisham: "Follow us on Facebook at Arizona at work dash southeastern Arizona. We post a lot of stuff on there. They can also give us a call at 520-458-9309, or they could come by and see us. We have an office in Sierra vista, 2600 E Wilcox drive; we're located in the Cochise College Downtown Center. We also have an office in Douglas at 515 E 7th St.