Fall Quinte Career Fair gives opportunities to the Belleville community

The career fair organizers (left to right): Eric Nestoruk, economic development administrative assistant for the city of Belleville, Victoria Watts, business growth and retention specialist for the city of Belleville, Elizabeth Edwards, economic development officer for the city of Quinte West, and Shannon Millar, tourism coordinator for the city of Quinte West.

By: Jessyka Maliksi 

BELLEVILLE – The Quinte Region Career Fair, held on Sept. 13, gave residents opportunities to find new employment or career paths.

The event was held at the Quinte Sports and Wellness Centre.

The Economic Development offices of Quinte West and Belleville partnered up for the Fall Career Fair.

This fair is an opportunity for employers around the region to display their companies to job-seekers or to those who are interested in a career change. The community is given the opportunity to connect with different employers. With 56 employers and just under 500 job seekers attending, the career fair did what it was intended to do.

With the Quinte region growing every day, a bi-annual event like this creates benefits for the residents, especially those who are new to the area and are seeking employment.

The career fair being held in one place allows job seekers to have easy access to pitch themselves to local businesses.

Rani Jadhab is a new to Belleville and is looking for a job. She attended the career fair in hopes of being able to talk to Redpath Sugar, which is her dream job. Jadhab says the career fair allowed her to talk to Redpath, while also being able to look at other options side by side.

“It’s very beneficial especially to have all the opportunities at one place…we can approach all the companies directly” said Jadhab. She expressed how nowadays everything is online, so being able to attend this event and talk to the employer’s face to face really helps in the job seeking process.

Finding employment can be very hard for newcomers, especially international students. But this event helps students put themselves out there to employers.

Rikit Thapa is a Loyalist College student from Nepal. He’s struggled with finding employment in the area, distributing his resume everywhere online, but not hearing anything back. He visited the career fair in hopes of finding a job and expanding his network.

“As an international student, I strongly believe that this job fair will really help us because it is a great [way] to communicate with new people and explore more job opportunities”. At the career fair he was able to hand in his resume and chat with many different employers.

The fair happens twice a year. The Spring 2023  fair saw a lot of attention with about 350 job-seekers in attendance. Some of them were new to the province or even the country. When coming from different parts of the world it can be hard to understand the process of a career fair or it can be very nerve-racking.

So, the City of Quinte West and Belleville decided to have service providers present at the event to help people “have a good experience, to coach them on how to approach employers, how to make a first impression, and how to get their resume ready”, said Heather Candler, director of economic development for the city of Belleville.

The Loyalist College Community Employment Services was one of the providers. The addition of their service helped out job-seekers. Many attendees wanted to have some pointers and practice on their elevator pitch before walking into the career fair, which is what the Community Employment Services was there for.

“We’re kind of there to help their confidence a little bit, ‘hype them up’ if you would, so they feel a bit more confident when going to speak to those employers”, said Kameel Sharma, workshop facilitator at Loyalist College Community Employment Services.

The career fair also helps local businesses present themselves to the community by connecting local employers to skilled workers. This event acts as a networking event for companies to push their work out to the public eye to help create recognition of what they have to offer.

“It’s a great way to enhance the awareness of what our respected business communities look like” said Elizabeth Edwards, the economic development officer for the city of Quinte West.