Job-seekers in Regions Three and Four, on Sunday November 26th, braved the inclement weather to congregate in the auditorium of the West Demerara Secondary School at Klien/Pouderoyen, hopeful that they would return to their homes in ‘high spirits’ and more suitably equipped to effect meaningful transformations in their lives on account of new opportunities in the world of work. Credit for the staging of last Sunday’s Job Fair can justifiably be claimed by the Region Three Chamber of Commerce which appears set to do its part to help change individual fortunes while better positioning businesses to flourish in the communities where there are jobs on offer. Sunday’s Job Fair was a modest but purposeful event that saw six companies – Puran Brothers Inc., CARICOM General Insurance Company Inc., Royal Chicken Inc., MJM Accounting and Management Institute, NSB/OMEGA Guyana Inc., CORUM Restaurant Group Inc., and Forester’s West Central Mall participating.
The positions on offer were overwhelmingly in the services sector, the ‘openings’ reflecting both an expansion of existing private sector businesses and the emergence of new ones in an economy that is beginning to attract successive waves of new investments as well as the expansion of pre-existing businesses. All of this is driven, directly and indirectly, by the ‘kicking in’ of the country’s oil and gas sector as a promising path to an overarching economic growth. These are interesting times for job-seekers. Pre-existing business houses are constantly on the lookout for the skills and aptitudes which they feel can make their businesses grow. Beyond that, as one business owner pointed out to this newspaper several weeks ago, where there is evidence of aptitude, businesses are often prepared to invest in training.
At the West Demerara Secondary School on Sunday, job-seekers appeared hopeful, the expressions on faces, in some instances, suggesting that they were engaged in pre-recorded rehearsals of the interviews that lay ahead. Others appeared preoccupied with contemplating the range of options that were available and which of those on offer might best suit them. The Stabroek Business inquiries revealed that the gathering comprised a mix of the unemployed and ‘working people’ seeking to ‘upgrade’. The staging of the event was, as well, a feather in the cap of the Region Three Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber deserves full credit for bringing the businesses and the job seekers together. It is a reflection of the growing interest of the Chamber in the concerns/interests of the community which augers well as much as for the welfare of the communities they serve as for their image and growth.
On Sunday, the hopefuls comprised both persons seeking ‘unskilled’ openings across sectors as well as those who appeared optimistic that some measure of certification might place their applications closer to the top of the pile. In a country where employment opportunities now exist in a wide range of sectors, not a great many institutions, particularly schools and colleges here in Guyana, appears to have caught on to the existence of a ‘market’ for coaching in a discipline that may be styled ‘Job Preparation’.
At last Sunday’s Job Fair there was evidence of a mix of the hopeful and the confident. There were instances in which the job seekers were afforded opportunities to engage the business owners (or in some instances other functionaries in authority) a circumstance that enabled them to make their respective cases ‘at the highest level.’ Whether all of the hopefuls were sufficiently suitably equipped to take advantage of the opportunity was not easy to tell. The company representatives who had come to the Job Fair hoping to ‘land’ a few good prospects were busy, too, ‘parading’ the substantive benefits and ‘perks’ that go with the various vacant positions. Encouragingly, significant numbers of applicants boasted qualifications at the Caribbean Examinations Council level, a circumstance that appeared to be not lost to the ‘head hunters’ who had turned up for the Job Fair. A conversation with the Chamber’s Public Relations Officer, Theon Alleyne, revealed that around two hundred and fifty persons had registered (online) to participate in the Job Fair. As it happened, there were only ninety positions on offer, an indication that the Chamber still has more work to do.
Chamber President, Premendra Parsan, told the Stabroek Business that the staging of the Job Fair is a reflection of an interest in better positioning persons in the community to improve their lives. The other ‘mission’ of the Job Fair, he said, was to attempt to provide suitable employment for residents of Region Three ‘closer home.’ Conversations with representatives of some of the companies that participated in Sunday’s Job Fair provided insights into some of the skills that they needed to improve in-house efficiency. Their interest in the job market appears to be as much out of a need to simply fill vacancies as it is to upgrade the skills that are currently available to them. According to Parsan, the Job Fair is rooted in advocacy for both job seekers and businesses in the Region. He told the Stabroek Business that the Chamber understands the challenges that both the job seekers and the business community are facing and are focused on working with them to surmount those problems.
