Coming career fair for area students

Adelle Ellis
Times Reporter

 

One of the toughest decisions a high school student must make is what career path they would like to pursue after they complete high school. It can be a daunting task to choose what you want to do for quite possibly the rest of your life with so many career path options available.
Junior Achievement of Southern Alberta is trying to make that choice a little easier on high school students through the creation of their free and unique career fair.
One hundred and seventy school students from Strathmore, Chestermere, Beiseker and Standard will be participating in the fourth annual World of Choices career fair on Mar. 2 at the Strathmore Civic Centre.
Twenty nine career mentors from different backgrounds will be present, seated into round-table discussions; during six 20-minute sessions students can sit and talk with career mentors about their career paths.
“The first few sessions are kind of crazy where after the 20 minutes are up, the students are running everywhere to try and get a seat at the next table of the person they want to talk to,” said Tristan Periard, regional coordinator for the southeast prairie region with Junior Achievement of Southern Alberta.
Selected Grade 10, 11 and 12 students are prepared by their teachers before the event so that they can decide which mentors they would like to talk to based on which careers interest them. Students are then challenged at the end of the day to go to a mentor they may not have otherwise gone to.
“We want to encourage students to look past their horizons. This will open the idea to new careers that students may have otherwise not thought of,” said Periard.
Another aspect that sets this career fair apart from others is the fact that all mentors are from the region. These are successful working people who come from the area, they aren’t brought out from Calgary. This is especially important because Junior Achievement wants to let students know there are many different career options available in rural areas, and that graduates don’t have to move to the city to find exciting and creative jobs.
“Just because you live in a rural area, it doesn’t stop you from becoming an entrepreneur and finding a career you love and staying with it,” said Periard, adding that Junior Achievement of Southern Alberta mainly delivers programs to students from Grade 5 to Grade 12 based on financial literacy, work readiness and entrepreneurship.
Some career mentors attending the event include a teacher who teaches one-on-one and online instead of in a regular classroom setting; the mayor of Chestermere who also works in business development; Fortis; Rosebud Theatre; several different trades; a pilot who will be soon doing a historical rebuild of a ship sunk in the Second World War; an electrician who specializes in solar energy; several different agricultural background mentors including a maltster; and a lady who started a company that deals in leadership skills and business building.
“We try to find mentors who aren’t in a typical career path. Or they are but they’ve branched off into something a bit different,” said Periard. “Even though you may go to school for one thing and you go for one career, it can branch off and lead to something else later.”
One thing Junior Achievement focuses on in other programs they hold throughout the year is readying students for the “fourth industrial revolution,” where career options available are moving heavily to jobs in the information technology (IT) industry, which Periard says is happening now and will be very prominent in the next five years.
Other large career sectors include the agricultural industry where there are more jobs with the buying and selling of grains and seed because of the growing brewing industry in Alberta; and in the energy sector where renewable energy is becoming prominent.
Once the day is complete, a lot of students have an idea of what career they want to pursue, or else they know the direction in which they should look for a career.
“Our program is about readiness, we want students to be ready for what is coming,” said Periard. “We are showing students that they don’t have to go to the city to be successful and do creative jobs. There are people who need those skills in this area,” she said. “It’s an empowering day.”