Owsley County High School Seniors Showcase Skills at Annual Reverse Job Fair

Owsley County High School seniors and Jobs for America's Graduates students filled the school with display boards Tuesday for the annual Reverse Job Fair in Booneville, placing their skills directly in front of the local employers who came looking for prospective workers.

The format flips the standard job search. Rather than students circulating through a room of company tables, employers walked to student-prepared displays and reviewed the work of graduating seniors with an eye toward hiring. The school district confirmed that businesses turned out and visited with seniors, thanking attending employers publicly and noting additional photos from the day were forthcoming.

Ahead of the fair, the school's official account had put out an open call to the local business community, expressing the hope that employers would "come out to support our students and potentially find some prospective workers."

JAG, the Jobs for America's Graduates program, operates in Kentucky as a state-recognized supplemental elective that earns students credit toward graduation. Its curriculum centers on workforce readiness, which makes JAG students a natural fit for an event built around direct employer-student introductions on the school's own turf.

Owsley County, one of the least populous counties in Kentucky at roughly 4,000 residents, sits in the Eastern Coalfield region of the state. The Reverse Job Fair, now a recurring fixture on the school's annual calendar, represents a consistent effort to put graduating seniors in the same room as the employers who operate closest to home before any of them have a reason to look somewhere else.