Fredericton — Bright-eyed graduates filled the halls of Fredericton’s Eastern College on Tuesday morning as the school hosted dozens of prospective employers who were looking to garner interest from the new grads.
The attendees came armed with their new set of skills and diplomas in specialized fields such as: Police Foundations, Supply Chain and Logistics, and the perennially popular Personal Support Worker for Support Workers.
“I’m really excited for this job fair today,” gleamed a freshly graduated Foster Horne who just finished his Cartography Foundations course. “My course has given me the essentials skills needed to follow my dream of eventually becoming a cartography expert.”
“Oh, goodness no, this is just a stepping stone,” responded Horne when asked if he would now be able to enter into the exciting world of cartography. “This was just a foundations course that will open the door to the next part of my journey. It’s like a map to success — get it? Because cartography is about making maps.”
The Manatee pressed Horne about the legitimacy of the course he just spent thousands of dollars to complete and suggested that there may not be a great demand for cartography in today’s Google Maps-filled world.
“You’re just being cynical,” he responded sharply. “The college obviously wouldn’t offer courses in fields that aren’t in high demand.”
Costco was one of the employers with a table at the job fair. Retail representatives appeared hopeful of finding a slew of grads excited to join the workforce and start paying off their student loans.
“We unfortunately didn’t hire anyone at all,” said Jeremy Hale, Costco manager. “Mostly people just wanted us to sign their paper saying that they spoke with us because there was a contest going on or something. We had a few people from the Supply Chain and Logistics course inquiring about our jobs — but we’re really just looking for cashiers.”
Our reporter asked Hale if this meant that the day was a complete loss.
“No, not at all,” he said optimistically. “We’re planting seeds. We fully expected that no one would be interested in our job offerings right now. But, give them a few months, and once they figure out they can’t find work in the RCMP or doing I.T. for Google, they’ll think of us because we offer reliable hours and a competitive starting wage.
“They’ll be back.”