The University of New Brunswick Student Employment Service hosted the 2013 UNB Summer Job and Graduating Student Career Fair last week.
Booths lined both sides of the Richard J. Currie Center gym. Around 30 students from both schools in all years browsed the booths, hoping to find that one job for the summer, or for the rest of their life.
“I’m looking for some well-paying jobs for the summer,” said Josh McGinley, a third-year business student from UNB.
“I need to pay tuition, right? Minimum wage doesn’t quite do that.”
Youth unemployment hit 14.1 per cent across the country in December.
Jenny Baechler came to the fair to promote the Master of Business program at Dalhousie University. She thinks it’s great that students from younger years came to the fair.
“It’s really nice to see a lot of first and second years out trying to get a sense of what they can do with their degree and how they can create a strategic approach to their degree. So, what are companies looking for, how can I put that in my degree?” she said
Tessa Waugh, a first-year UNB student said it’s “definitely easier than going to all of these places separately.”
There were also some students who came from the Renaissance College program.
Emilie Chaisson, a UNB student, said, “For our program at Renaissance College, we are required to find a key internship for the summer, so we’re just here looking for possible job opportunities.”
At the career fair she thought she might try to apply to Horizon Health in their human resources department.
Although the career fair was also advertised to St. Thomas, there were few booths that seemed to be towards students with an arts degree.
Meghan Osteveau, the representative from Horizon Health, says their organization mostly focuses on students from the nursing program at UNB, but, that isn’t to say they don’t look at other programs.
“We accept applications from students in every program,” Osteveau said.
“During the summer there’s always project work that an arts student is fully capable of doing. There’s research opportunities as well.”
Baechler gave another option.
“For some people, it’s time to go back into school,” she said. “The job market’s soft, the opportunities aren’t there, the undergrad degree was interesting, but want to do something else and the grad degree will be a good fit, those are all good reasons to go into a grad degree.”
