BATON ROUGE- Hiring managers hope they can schedule interviews and hire people who went looking for work at a job fair held Saturday at Baton Rouge Community College.

Every booth was busy with people looking for work, and short-staffed companies were eager to look for help.

"Here we have Performance Contractors. We have Turner Industries. We have Our Lady Of the Lake. We have Baton Rouge Police Department. Everybody is hiring here in Baton Rouge," said Dr. James Gilmore with the Institute for Human Development.

Gilmore and Representative C. Denise Marcelle teamed up with the Louisiana Non-Profit and Business Assistance Program to host the job fair.

More than 475 people showed up on the hunt for employment.

"When I pulled into the parking lot, it was full. I had no idea it would be like this," job seeker Michelle Hodnett said. "I got laid off during the pandemic and have just been working on school. Now I'm here to test the water to see what I have available to me."

Shutdowns, lay-offs, closures and even federal help to keep paying workers was much-needed relief at first, but now businesses are struggling to attract workers back.

"A lot of lay-offs due to the pandemic occurred in 2020. There was a lot of downsizing because companies didn't understand the expectations of what might happen with the market. Now that things are getting better, and people are getting vaccinated, companies are needing people," Gilmore said.