Ryan Clayburn isn't too picky about where he'd like to work next. He just wants to get back to work after Hurricane Katrina last week ended his position as an outside salesman for a company in New Orleans.

"Right now I'm looking for anything in sales, but I'll take anything at this point," said Clayburn, dressed in a snappy new suit he bought Tuesday for any job interview that might come his way.

Clayburn was among an estimated 1,000 people, most Katrina refugees with a few locals thrown in, who took advantage of a job fair Wednesday in downtown Atlanta put on by the state of Georgia.

Back in New Orleans, Clayburn's wife, Jennifer, had been the director of sales at a Wyndham Hotel. She fortunately has already landed a new job in Atlanta, a position in the sales office of the downtown Sheraton Hotel -- the same hotel where the job fair was held.

"We live in Hammond (north of New Orleans), but we are moving to Atlanta," said Clayburn, who sold liquid gas products for Messer, an industrial sales company in New Orleans.

"We are getting out of there for safety reasons," he said. "There were three shootings in my neighborhood last night and a shooting at a local gas station."

At the job fair, more than a dozen companies had booths set up to meet one-on-one with applicants. The usual requirement that all applicants present a Social Security card or other papers was waived for the day, considering most of the refugees didn't grab their important documents as they fled their homes.

READ: Georgia Offers Job Fair for Victims

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