MetroHealth Systems partnered with more than a dozen businesses in Northeast Ohio for the second annual transgender job fair.

"This event has been eight months in the making," Amy Delp, vice president of quality and inclusion at MetroHealth, said. "The transgender community is two times more likely to be unemployed."

Among some of the 40-plus job seekers was Kimberly Kerns.

Kerns transitioned from a man to a woman in 2008. "I really didn't think I could do it," Kerns said. "I looked in the mirror and said, 'you could never look like a girl.'"

But one day, Kern said, she just decided she was going to go through with the change. "I was really depressed. I just got tired of feeling that way."

Kern said she had some really dark days but said the worst part was getting and keeping a job.

"They'll say, 'well we can let anybody go in the first 90 days.' All it was, was you figured me out and then they didn't want me. But I can't prove it," Kerns said.

Now Kerns is facing a new struggle. She's been without a job for more than a year because she was shot in the arm.

"Now I got two strikes against me. I'm transgender and I got something wrong with me," Kerns said.

Kerns came to the job fair in hopes of finding companies who will hire her for being herself and her work ethic not her physical appearance.

"We're real people and we've got a lot of skills and we're valuable," Ginger Marshall, a volunteer for the job fair, said.

Marshall knows the job struggle all too well. She went through it herself.

"It's horrible because you just want die... Having a job is so much about who you are and if nobody will even talk to you there's no way you can have any self esteem or money or pay your rent or anything else," Marshall said.

Volunteers offered several resources for job seekers - everything from free headshots to resume building.

Major companies like Starbucks, GE and Hilton were in attendance.

The job fair runs Saturday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the MetroHealth Main Medical Campus.