October 20th, 2005

Dear VASPA Members and Friends,

The 37th Annual VASPA Job Fair and Fall Conference is only a few weeks away and rooms at Charlottesville’s DoubleTree Hotel are filling up rapidly.

The Education American Network (www.educationamerica.net)is sponsoring the Job Fair scheduled for Wednesday, November 9, from 4-7 pm. EAN has posted banners on their websites, posted the event on numerous online directories and discussion forums, sent promotional flyers and newsletters to their registered job-seekers and processed several job fair announcements via vaspa.org.

If you have not done so, you are encouraged to register your school division for the Job Fair now (http://www.vaspa.org/2005_conference_regform.pdf). Experience has shown that a big incentive for job-seeker participation is to post on the VASPA website, as early as possible, a list of all participating school divisions. This allows applicants “lead time” for arranging to be away from their jobs or classes to attend the Job Fair. An additional job-seeker inducement are descriptions of hiring needs of the school divisions when they complete the registration form (e.g., mid-year vs. 2006-2007 vacancies) and whether recruiters are prepared to make onsite job offers. These will be posted with the list of participating recruiters and usually generate the need for scheduling specific interviews via e-mail prior to November 9. So, please, take this time to complete the Job Fair recruiter registration form and FAX or mail it to our treasurer, Michael Heard.

An added feature this year for all registered recruiters is the opportunity to access the EAN database (over 260 resumes have already been uploaded for the Job Fair by interested job-seekers) for reviewing and, if desired, scheduling interviews for the day of the Job Fair. Information for accessing the database will be sent to registered recruiters next week.

As Job Fair sponsor, EAN is also providing to all school divisions registered for the Job Fair or Conference the opportunity to post all of their current and anticipated job vacancies on EAN’s websites from now until November 30, at no cost. If you qualify and are interested, please send your openings to jobs@educationamerica.net for the EAN staff to process and post online.

The October 28 registration deadline is fast-approaching. Please take this time to complete your plans for participating in your professional organization’s annual event. We’re ready to assist you to ensure that your attendance is not only highly enjoyable, but highly productive as well.

See you real soon in Charlottesville!