Jamba Juice gave 8-ounce Caribbean Passion smoothies to anyone who filled out a Jamba Juice application at yesterday's Job Quest job fair. The Akamai Employment Agency held a drawing for $50. And Superstar Hawaii Transit showed off the blazing-red Chevrolet SSR sports car/truck it's letting its employee of the year use for a year.

But Rodney Young, store manager for the Waikiki Food Pantry, may have been even more aggressive than many of the other recruiters looking to fill dozens of openings in the tightest job market in the country.

Young stepped out from his recruiting booth — backed by a faux medieval stone wall — and stopped many of the 3,400 job seekers who were simply walking by to talk about openings at Food Pantry and its umbrella of companies.

Young offered "dozens" of jobs on the spot for positions that paid from $6.75 to $8.45 per hour.

"Everybody here has to do more to attract candidates," said Beth Busch, Job Quest's executive director. "They're stepping it up, definitely. They've got to. It's brutal. It's just brutal out there."

Rusell Chun, chairman of the O'ahu Workforce Investment Board, which co-sponsored the job fair, said employers "have to be very creative" about what they offer.

"Not everybody wants to work 40 hours per week," Chun said. "In an employee market like we have, you have to be flexible and realize that people have families, kids and childcare needs. It's a challenge."

With Hawai'i continuing to enjoy the lowest unemployment rate in the country, the 182 companies and organizations that came to the Neal Blaisdell Center yesterday pushed themselves even more to attract attention and showcase the benefits they offer to employees.

Along with the usual offerings of candy, key chains and other doodads, many of the recruiters held drawings for movie tickets, money, trips and other goodies.

Geico recruiters had job seekers spin a roulette-like wheel to win prizes including a Geico gecko antenna ornament.

"It draws more people to the booth," said Geico service supervisor Cathy Yoon.

Recruiters for 7-Eleven Hawaii brought along a 27-inch, flat-screen television to run a video about working at 7-Eleven.

"We're the only ones with a TV," human resources specialist Suzie Henyan said proudly. "It's to bring people in from a distance, and so they'll see something different."

Carleen Choo, Food Pantry's director of human resources, pointed to Young, who was busy stopping passers-by, and said: "If you're not doing anything, you're not going to get anybody. If you sit behind the booth and wait for them to come to you, you won't be successful here."

But officer Llorente LaCap of the police department recruiting unit from San Jose, Calif., stood by himself behind his table, outfitted with brochures and job descriptions.

The department had never sent a recruiter to Hawai'i before, LaCap said, but needs to fill 50 openings for officers.

Faced with Hawai'i's low unemployment, LaCap hoped he could find some interest in officer positions that start at $70,000 per year and rise to $107,000 after seven years.

Det. David Do of the Honolulu Police Department human resources division yesterday accompanied the usual contingent of HPD recruiters that can be found at every major job fair. And he expects to see even more Mainland police departments coming to Hawai'i to help fill their vacancies.

"We're all competing for the same small pool" of candidates, Do said. "We expect more and more Mainland agencies to come because that pool is so small."

Even though Hawai'i's job market favors job seekers, the quality of candidates varied widely yesterday — from entry-level workers with little higher education and job experience to veteran managers who were disappointed by some of the salaries being offered.

"There's just a huge variety," Geico's Yoon said. "Some people are very well educated and others are looking for their first jobs."

Leon Watson, 50, of Pearl City, got some welcomed resume pointers from Robin Rohrer of the Akamai Employment Agency. Rohrer thought Watson's years of experience as a program director and his education, which includes a doctoral degree from Michigan State University, could command a salary in Hawai'i ranging from $65,000 to $85,000.

"He's definitely overqualified," Rohrer said. "And the overqualified are still having a tough time in this economy."

For Jana Yanagisako, 22, of Hawai'i Kai, yesterday's job fair represented a chance to meet a roomful of employers since graduating from the University of Hawai'i in December with a degree in human resources.

But it also gave her a real-life example of how human resources specialists interact with job candidates.

"Body language, personality, physical interaction — you can't get that in a book," Yanagisako said. "A lot of them asked you a lot of questions about your background and seemed glad to talk to you. Some of them just handed you an application."

Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com.