During a class at Auburn’s WorkSource Center late Tuesday afternoon, a man named Steven laid out for a guest interviewer what it had been like looking for work over the past three weeks.

And the positive experience he’s had working with one of the center’s veteran representatives who has connected him with area employers looking for veterans like Steven with skills transferrable to a job position.

Though, so far, no luck.

“That’s why I’m in the class because I’ve been out of the civilian loop for so long or have applied for a job,” Steven explained. “I know things have changed over the years. I am in this class so I can learn how to get into the interview process because this is all new to me.”

How are things different, the interviewer wanted to know?

“… Sir, the military way is very cut and dry. They look at how you compose yourself, but in these job interviews it’s a completely different type thing because I am not moving forward from a job I am already in.”

His interviewer, who happened to be Gov. Jay Inslee on a brief trip to Auburn, laid out his own plans to shake things up in Olympia to improve the prospects of Steven and others looking for work in of the toughest job markets in decades.

“We’re trying to grow more jobs in this state, build more airplanes and create an environment in which all kinds of businesses can grow,” Inslee said. “We want an economy that works for everybody, no matter where they are in the economic sphere. And we’ve got some work to do on that.”

Inslee said that he was looking forward to working with legislators during the coming months to improve prospects for job seekers and working people alike.

Such as working to increase the minimum wage, so that if a person has a job, he said, that person can at least keep a roof over his or her head.

And working toward making the Working Family Tax Credit a reality, so people at the lower end of the income scale could get something of a refund from the state to make up for some of the economic hardships they’d been suffering.

He said he would continue to work on health care reform to ensure that everybody has access to health insurance.

And he would try to find an alternative to paying for schools so that the tax burden does not fall so heavily on working people but on those who are in a better position to pay it. That solution includes increasing taxes on polluting industries.

Inslee asked if anyone in the room had enrolled in any colleges or technical schools.

One woman said she had graduated from EWU in 2013 with a degree in economics, but told Inslee she was struggling to find work.

“The most important thing for me is just finding something that is going to fit with my degree or work into something in the field I have my degree in. Because going directly into economics is not as feasible as taking a stepping stone from an office position toward that field,” the woman said.