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Alexis Reid has been out of work since she lost her job at Rocky Mountain  ATV/MC in Winchester during the coronavirus outbreak, but she may soon be back in the workforce.

Reid was one of 25 people who drove to the parking lot at the Adecco office in the Colby Station shopping center Tuesday afternoon and drove away with a job offer.

Steven Moore, a delivery recruiter for the staffing agency, said both the Winchester and Mount Sterling offices had drive-through job fairs Tuesday from 2 to 4 p.m., and together had 47 visitors for more than 300 available jobs.

“Everybody who came through got a job offer,” he said. “It was really successful.”

He said the company is going to do it again from 2 to 4 p.m. Tuesday at both locations: 1930 Bypass Road in Winchester and 200 Young Lane No. 2, just off Indian Mound Drive near the Interstate 64 exit at Maysville Road in Mount Sterling.

The company’s ad for its drive-up job fairs promised that “this will be the easiest thing you do all day.”

Job applicants drove into the parking lot, and Adecco employees, wearing face coverings and keeping at least six feet of distance, came up and talked with them through their windows and used digital devices to connect the job seekers with available openings.

“You don’t even have to leave your car,” said Susan Bishop, a manager at the Winchester office.

If they wanted, though, job seekers could come inside the air-conditioned building to fill out a job application, which was what Reid chose to do.

A little after 4 p.m. Tuesday, Bishop said there had been 10 applicants in Winchester for 313 jobs within a 22-mile radius of the office. Many of those jobs were in Clark County, and some were just across county lines.

“The majority of the openings are in manufacturing and warehouse settings. We do have some clerical openings but not as many administrative jobs,” she said.

“Eighty-five to 90 percent of our jobs are career opportunities; they are not temporary,” but full-time, permanent jobs.

“We’re part of the courtship to introduce people to jobs, and then it’s kind of up to them to make it … that marriage.”

Bishop said this is the first time the Winchester agency has done a drive-up job fair in the parking lot.

“We’re used to always doing job fairs, but we’ve had to make it look a little different with the social distancing aspect,” she said. “Some other Adeccos in other markets have been doing them, and they’ve had great success, so we thought we would do it. If we find out that this is beneficial, we’re going to do it once per week.”

Bishop said one reason Adecco took the innovative approach to placing job applicants this week is that the $600 a week in extra unemployment benefits jobless workers have been getting as part of the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation program, is “going to be running out, so we’re trying to get people ahead of that.”

The extra benefits are scheduled to expire at the end of July, but according to The New York Times, because of a quirk in the calendar, workers in most states won’t qualify for the additional payments after this week, and will be left with only regular unemployment compensation, which for many is only a few hundred dollars.

Congress, however, is working on a relief package which could extend the additional payments.