Cape Town hosts successful Career Indaba

Some 2,000 school leavers, learners, students, job seekers, teachers and parents walked the exhibition floor to meet the 46 companies, universities and colleges and attend free workshops focused on career choice and finding a job. SAA's stand was a popular one with school leavers and students alike and the airline was keen to show that working at an airline was more than just being a pilot or flight attendant.

Lack of advice

"There is a lack of career advice and many young people will pick the stereotypical jobs when you ask them what they want to be - a doctor, lawyer or engineer," says Career Indaba director Claire O'Connell. "But they don't realise that the subject choices they have already made may prevent them from fulfilling these dreams. They can become disillusioned and we wanted an opportunity to show them there are so many other options available to them.

"It has been inspiring to see such a variety of visitors to the very first Career Indaba in Cape Town. The event is a huge success every year in Sandton so it was logical to bring it here this year. The workshops were particularly popular, ranging from topics such as how to write a CV to how to apply for a bursary."

Seasonal positions

Global online platform Amazon was there specifically to recruit for 400 seasonal positions at their Cape Town office for the upcoming peak holiday online shopping season. Peculia Williamson, who is the senior recruitment manager for Amazon in Cape Town, says apart from English, there is a particular need for foreign language skills in their call centre and customer service divisions, such as Russian, Japanese, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese and Chinese.

While the Food Lover's Market stand at Career Indaba also proved very popular with visitors, partly thanks to copious bags of dried fruit and nut give-ways, Food Lover's Market's HR director Lizelle Greeff says food or supermarket retail is not always such a popular career choice with students. "It can be a difficult environment, long hours, weekends etc. But with the company's phenomenal growth over the past few years we have had to provide strong training and development platforms to enable us to promote from within and create an environment where employees can train, grow and equip themselves for their future careers."