Camosun College is hosting its annual Career Fair from 10 am to 2 pm on Thursday, January 28, and this year’s event will be offering something new for the college’s students. Camosun College marketing officer Sally Coates has been working hard to include companies who may be looking for those who are taking business classes.
“It’s been going for 10 years and it’s always been just a trades and technologies career fair,” says Coates. “But every time the companies have come they’ve always wanted business students as well.”
This year, business students, alongside Camosun’s trade and tech students, will be able to meet potential employers and find out about potential careers after graduation. The turnout for previous events has always been impressive, says Coates, but this year she is expecting more students than ever.
“Last year we had almost 2,000 students,” she says. “But with business, I would expect to be getting around 3,000 students.”
In addition to the added opportunities for business students, this will be a large event for Camosun, as it will be the first major event held in the new Trades Education and Innovation Complex at the Interurban campus.
“We are really excited,” says Coates, “about showing off the space to the students and to the employers.”
Coates has made an effort to include many local companies, but the event also draws organizations in from Colorado to Lethbridge. The majority of companies who attend are small businesses and value the training that Camosun students receive.
“The small tech companies don’t have time to have fluff and bureaucracy, so the students they hire can’t be a one-dimensional person, and Camosun’s education really, really emphasizes applied knowledge and a can-do attitude,” says Coates. “A lot of the tech companies go to Camosun.”
The career fair isn’t just about finding a job, Coates says, and over the years she has seen more than one student invigorated and inspired by the event.
“I’ve seen students actually completely change their focus from what they were studying to something else,” she says, “or it energizes them to go right into it even more, and I think both are equally valid.”
Career fairs in general can be useful and informative, and an excellent way to get a foot in an employer’s door, but that requires a skill set people haven’t necessarily learned. To help students get the most out of the event, Camosun has set up two workshops.
“We are having two sessions about how to work a career fair, what exactly they should be doing when they go to career fairs, and for students to learn how to effectively market their skills, experience, and knowledge to potential employers,” says Coates. “We teach them how to be the student that the employer remembers.”
Go to camosun.ca/cese for information on the career fair and the workshops.