Botswana International Financial Service Centre (IFSC) is to hold the fifth annual Career Fair next month in an attempt to bolster the relationship between graduates and the professional cadres for the benefit of the national economy.
This year’s Career Fair will be held under the theme “Shaping Graduates into Professionals” and will be supported by career clinics, which will be run by two outstanding consultancy firms, CGP Consultants and Peoples Connection.
“Career Fairs are part of the IFSC’s plan for career readiness. The reason being that most of the potential investors that we talk to often ask us whether we do have the right skills and work ethic,” head of communications at IFSC, Tebogo Lebotse, said.
“Skills availability and work ethic are critical in luring investors to Botswana,” she added.
The career fair is based on three principles that include securing internships for would-be employees and graduates, interaction between the private sector professionals and the graduates in trying to shape their professional paths. Further, it also provides a job portal where graduates who have not yet secured jobs could load their curriculum virtue for the easy access by the would-be employers.
“The idea of internship is that we would like companies to take interns for six months to ensure that they do quality work after that. They would also feel to be part of the company,” she said. “We would not like to see them being used as cheap labour.”
Since the inception of the Career Fair programme some five years ago, over 200 graduates have benefited from the scheme and some of them ended up being fully employed by some of those companies that initially took them in as interns.
Lebotse said this year they are targeting to get 400 graduates to attend the fairs where they would be matched with organizations that are aligned with their career ambitions. It is expected that 30 companies with varying disciplines would exhibit at the fair. Some of the disciplines which are not traditionally aligned to the financial services will come from Public Relations and Marketing.
A great number of companies in financial, IT and human resources are also backing this year’s fair.
“We are expecting to get 150 professionals and get testimonies from companies and individuals who previously benefited from the programme. And we hope that other companies will learn from this,” she said.
Interested graduates are encouraged to lock on line to register for the programme.
