In tough economic times, it's not easy to find a job if you have difficulty with English. And, while being bilingual makes you more marketable, finding the right job still can be a challenge.

The first question often is "Where do I look?" The answer: just about everywhere.

LEITA COWART/Special (ENLARGE)

Claudia Cornejo Hamilton discusses job openings with Eli Velez, employment services director with the Latin American Association, at a job fair geared toward Hispanic and bilingual professionals.

At a job fair sponsored by the National Society of Hispanic Professionals last month at the Cobb Galleria Centre, Carolyn Altemus was taking résumés and interviewing prospective employees for national and local jobs with the Boy Scouts of America.

She attends job fairs; posts openings on job Web sites, called job boards; and places classified advertisements in publications aimed at minority audiences as well as mass-circulation media.

"I like doing job fairs because you can meet people face-to-face," she said.

Altemus pointed out that the recruiting process is two-way: trying to find the right people for the jobs available and persuading them to work for a nonprofit organization like the Boy Scouts.

The job fair focused on professional positions for people of Hispanic background and bilingual candidates.

Rob Stewart, sales director for LatPro, a Miami-based job board for Hispanic and bilingual professionals, said the single most important skill that employers want is someone who can speak English.

"It's the way to advance in your career," he said.

"You can find a job if you don't speak English," he noted, but there is little room for advancement. But with knowledge of the language, "you can sell yourself as having multicultural and bilingual skills."

LatPro works with organizations such as the NSHP to organize and present job fairs.

Some jobs, he said, are hot regardless of the languages that applicants speak.

"Health care is always in the top 10," he said. "And there's always a need for people with specialized degrees, such as engineering, or CPAs."

In those fields, "no matter what the ethnicity, there is crossover" among people of different ethnic backgrounds who attend the job fairs, Stewart said. LatPro also sees many Asian and African-American job candidates.

"We're keen on highlighting a multicultural skill set as well as being bilingual," he said. "It's really good for businesses."

The primary vehicle for bringing jobs and candidates together is the organization's jobs board, Stewart said.

Like large, mainstream Internet job boards, there is no charge for candidates to access the listings.

LatPro reaches out to professional organizations and Hispanic chambers of commerce to be partners for events such as jobs fairs.

Help-wanted ads

Taking a more traditional approach but with a similar focus are newspapers for ethnic communities.

Papers for the Korean and Hispanic communities in Atlanta carry classified ads in their native languages, often with English versions.

Daniel Yi, publisher of Atlanta Times, focuses on the Korean community, about 100,000 strong centered in Gwinnett and DeKalb counties but with pockets of populations in Cobb, Fulton and elsewhere in metro Atlanta.

Other than a few subtitles with ads, the newspaper is printed entirely in Korean.

Yi explained that most of the newspaper's readers are immigrants directly from Korea who may have had little exposure to English. Second-generation Korean immigrants, including many who attended school all their lives in the United States, are fluent in English, he said.

He sees his publication, including ads for jobs, as a bridge between the Korean community and the rest of metro Atlanta.

Many businesses in the community are mom-and-pop stores, cellphone sales, real estate brokerages and restaurants, Yi said, but they need to hire workers who are not necessarily Korean. Restaurants, for example, often hire Hispanic workers for some positions in the kitchen, including cooks, he said.

Koreans "hire people from other ethnic groups," he said. "Our community creates many jobs, and we want to hire American people. Many Hispanic people work in our businesses. Anyone can work in our community."

That is similar to what Raul Trujillo sees at Mundo Hispánico, a Spanish-

language newspaper aimed at Atlanta's Hispanic market, where he is sales manager.

(Mundo Hispánico is owned by Cox Enterprises, which also owns The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.)

Advertising in print and online includes blue- and white-collar jobs, Trujillo said.

Employers seeking white-collar workers generally are looking for people who are bilingual, he said, while blue-collar employers do not have a preference.

"We have a lot of service-oriented jobs," he said.

Trujillo said Mundo Hispánico, like other ethnic media, "is a preferred source when it comes to recruiting Hispanics or people who speak Spanish."

Those employers include the U.S. Border Patrol, he said, which is looking for people who speak Spanish.

Korean businesses also want to reach into the larger community for customers, Yi said.

But people who speak English or Spanish cannot read Korean. That's why some of the ads for businesses or job openings are partly in English.

The same is true at Mundo Hispánico, Trujillo noted.

Besides the help-wanted advertising, Yi strives to communicate business news and practices to immigrants and to connect them with non-Korean customers.

"The main barrier is language," Yi said.

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