On May 11, Grade 8 to 12 students from Virden Junior High, Virden Collegiate and Elkhorn School participated in the Fort La Bosse School Division Career Expo at Virden Collegiate. A variety of post-secondary education options, as well as employment opportunities with Virden and area businesses, were showcased at the day-long event, which was also open to the public during the lunch hour.
“Typically, there has been an annual plan to have a career fair, and then due to COVID we didn’t for a couple of years, so it was just getting that planning back in place starting in the new year,” said organizer Janelle Grieve, who serves as the division’s Career Development and Apprenticeship Coordinator.
Grieve was pleased with the reception from educational institutions as well as the business community.
“We were thrilled with 40 tables in the gym,” she said. “Some local colleges, like ACC (Assiniboine Community College) attended, as well as Brandon University. Lakeland even came from a distance, and then students were able to make contact with some of those groups that are looking for more employees. RCMP and the Canadian Forces, for example, would be more of a national search. People were pleased with how much students were talking, asking questions and trying things at their booths.”
Students were asked to pick two booths and pose such questions as:
- How do you use math, reading/writing and technology in your daily work?
- What classes would you recommend taking in high school to prepare for this career?
- What do you enjoy the most about your job?
In addition to exhibitors touting traditional academic pursuits, Grieve observed that several emphasized careers in the trades as an area for students to pursue after high school.
“The trades seem to be one of the areas that is growing in ways that now they are promoting the opportunities,” she said. “All of our groups did a good job of promoting the different aspects of their job in a hands-on way, or having something interactive that drew the students to their booth and gave them the experience.”
Attending the Career Expo is deemed beneficial for students having one or more years of high school remaining as well as those for whom graduation is less than two months away.
“Some of our students are close to graduation and looking at post-secondary opportunities and the skills and education that they need for them,” Grieve said. “Others are looking to start a career. For some of the younger students like the grade eights and nines, it’s just giving them that awareness of what some of those opportunities might be and exploring things that they may not have thought of as a career. Hopefully, this is something we can do again next year and make it even bigger.”
