JAC job fair grabs student attention

Over 30 exhibitors have been at John Abbott College since yesterday for the local CEGEP's 19th annual job fair, greeting curious students to introduce them to immediate or future employment opportunities, as well as internships, and booths will be present tomorrow as well. "I'm learning a lot that I didn't know," student Catherine Lefèvre Tuck said today, in between approaching some of the different booths and employers at the institution's agora auditorium.

Lefèvre Tuck said she specifically gravitated toward the nurses' booth, as that is the career she was interested in.

Speakers there opened her eyes to how the advent of new technology is changing that career path, she said, listing the presence of web cams that can keep help a nurse keep an eye on several patients remotely at once. Of course, she went over the basics again, as well. "You have to be good with people, you have to be good at working with a team, you have to be good at problem-solving," she said she was told.

The health care industry was present in more ways than one, with Cynthia Perreault, a midwife, representing the Ordre des Sage-femmes du Québec, the government-recognized body that mandates those who wish to work in midwifery. "It's very much in demand," Perreault said of her career path, explaining that many pregnant women in the province who require midwife services are put on waiting lists. On the third floor of the CLSC Lac St. Louis in Pointe Claire, where Perreault works, "for every one woman that has a midwife, there are three pregnant women on the waiting lists," she said.

Several media companies, such as CJAD Newstalk Radio, 94.7 Hits FM, and Transcontinental Media, The Chronicle's parent company, were present at the fair with booths as well. "We're looking for interns for our promotions team," said Tina Paylan, who works at the marketing department of 94.7 Hits FM. By the looks of it, the team there was succeeding too, as several students were lining up today to sign up for the internship.

At the CÉGEP De la Gaspésie et des Iles booth nearby, ski guide Stéphanie Lemieux was going over her presentation of the CEGEP's two unique programs on offer, a forestry program, and an adventure tourism one.

Lemieux explained both of them are relatively recent addition to the CEGEP's curriculum. Adventure tourism students learn the necessary techniques to become guides for kayaking, skiing, or other outdoor activities. "You have to put a lot of time and effort to become am expert in your activity," said Lemieux.

She said many jobs in the field are seasonal and do not pay that well, but the lifestyle more than makes up for that as compensation. She said outdoors guides often have to find ways of making a living around the seasonal nature of the job. "In the summer, I go to Chili," she said, since the reverse weather patterns in the southern hemisphere allow her to continue her work there.

Sylvie Boucher, the fair's main organizer, and the manager of the cegep's Student Employment Centre, said there were over 80 careers represented this year through 110 different employers.

Tomorrow, she said, the fair's exhibitors will mostly be related to social or community work, with such presenters as Engineers without Borders, or Librarians without Borders.

The fair kicked off on Monday with a motivational speech by Andy Nulman, who runs a wireless solutions company called Airborne Mobile, and has organized Montreal's Just for Laughs Festival for 15 years.