Career fair ready to log on
CareerBeacon.com adds student job component to popular online event from April 17-24
The Department of Post-Secondary Education, Training and Labour is continuing its creative approach to finding ways to link well-trained New Brunswickers to good jobs in their home province.
Minister Dr. Ed Doherty, MLA for Saint John Harbour, announced today his department has teamed up with CareerBeacon.com an Internet firm affiliated with Brunswick News, to launch the ninth Virtual Career Fair/Expo d'emploi virtuel April 17-24.
Doherty said the timing of the bilingual job fair, which allows employers across the province to post thousands of jobs free of charge on the CareerBeacon.com website, will help generate a number of resumes for businesses gearing up for a busy summer season.
Jean Nadeau, CareerBeacon.com general manager, says a new focus this year will be highlighting student recruitment.
"For the first time, we will be including summer jobs for students and new graduates. Plus, we will roll-over all the student job opportunities after the fair ends onto JobBeacon.com, our affiliated site geared to seasonal and short-term workers. We will leave them up for 60 days, which will take us well into June," he said. "This will make the opportunities available to the most students at the optimum job-seeking time for them."
Doherty said the new component will help all New Brunswick employers have maximum changes for recruiting the province's young people into their firms.
"We see this as in keeping with our objective to bring the aged 15-22 demographic to our website," added Nadeau. "We know this is the age that we have to start recruiting if we are to keep more young and talented New Brunswickers within our job market."
Nadeau said the thousands of available jobs for all candidates will range from the so-called white collar jobs to trades workers, to knowledge industry workers and run the gamut from full professional posts to part-time and entry level positions."
"We are focused this fair on providing more exposure to employers seeking employees," he said. He noted that last fall's virtual career fair almost doubled the number of cities from which job applicants applied. The final figure was 201 cities, up from a previous high of 109. Of those applicants coming from outside of the province, 48 per cent came from Ontario and 14 per cent from Alberta.
"We know that 37 per cent of the 130 employers participating in the November event received resumes from candidates outside of New Brunswick," Nadeau said, noting these applicants were often New Brunswickers seeking to return home to work.
In post-event surveys as well, 29 per cent of the participating companies said they were experiencing online recruitment for the first time. A total of 95 per cent of participants said the Virtual Career Fair should be repeated.
Nadeau said the event is successful because of the combined support of the provincial government and CareerBeacon.com and its parent company, Brunswick News Inc.
"The extensive coverage this event receives from Brunswick News Inc. publications ensures that everyone is aware of it and knows how to make use of these opportunities," he added. This year, besides extensive coverage in the daily newspapers the Times & Transcript, the New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal and the Daily Gleaner, there will also be a full promotional component in BNI-owned weekly newspapers throughout the province.
Besides highlighting employment opportunities that are available in New Brunswick, the fair enhances employment search habits of provincial workers from all ages on the use of the Internet to search for the best jobs.
Augmenting the trademark free listings, convenient search engines and attractive graphics that make job searching easier, the April fair will include free job listings of Virtual Career Fair advertisers in the New Brunswick daily newspapers, the Telegraph Journal, the Times & Transcript, the Daily Gleaner and BNI-owned weeklies. "This is a tremendous added value feature," said Nadeau.
CareerBeacon.com's job fair team is currently contacting companies to invite their participation in this initiative. Employers interested in participating in the fair can send an e-mail to expoads@jobbeacon.com or call 1-888-878-7637. They can also go to www.careerbeacon.com/vcf/jobsubmit.html
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