Job fair gives unemployed fresh opportunities

Offering a beacon of hope to some of those unemployed in the country was the job fair event held in Sheraton Metechi Palace Hotel on Friday. Representatives from the Government of Georgia, business organizations and educational institutions welcomed 50 tourism and service sector employers and more then 800 qualified job seekers for the first job fair supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) two-year, $3 million Job Counseling and Placement Project implemented by the International Organization (IOM) for Migration.

The job fair is expected to result in job placements and opportunities for Georgians to obtain skills and qualifications through courses offered by training institutions. This job fair is the first of four similar events to be organized in Batumi, Kutaisi and again in Tbilisi, throughout 2011 by IOM.

Tbilisi mayor Gigi Ugulava expressed his gratitude towards the organizing companies saying that the Jobs Fair forum is a unique chance for employees to advertise their vacancies publicly and meet jobs seekers face to face.

“Speaking about unemployment is very hard and a lot of the time we do not even want to speak about it. It is difficult because in a lot of effort in various areas is needed in order to create job opportunities,” Ugulava said adding that many people who attended this forum will not come to a similar forum next time as they will already be employed.

Deputy Chief of Mission Kent Logsdon welcomed the audience and expressed his hope that soon those job seekers attending the job fair forum would find appropriate vacancies.

“We know this is a very important situation right now, the economic issues for people, finding jobs are very important and US government is happy to help,” Deputy Chief of Mission Kent Logsdon stated. “We are happy we have great number of employers today and hopefully people will be able to match up to some jobs we found. Through these jobs so far we have almost 3000 people who have gone to the centers and then found their jobs from the employers, so our goal is 5000 at the end of 2 years,” Logsdon told The Messenger.

Olga Arutunian was looking for a job related to either banking or tourism. “This is the first time I am attending such an event and I am pretty sure that unemployed people with different backgrounds can find appropriate jobs. Personally I would prefer to work either in a bank or a tourist company, so we will see what will become of this,” she said.

“I have looked around but have not seen a position that appeals to me. I saw a cook vacancy and sales manager position and unfortunately neither of them is for me. I brought my CV and if anything interesting comes up I will try to offer myself to this particular position,” 21 year old Tamar Berishvili told the paper.

Black Sea International University was among the participant companies however they offered job seekers not vacancies but training courses at their university at an affordable price.

Ana Asatiani, representative of IBSU told The Messenger that any person who takes their training courses will gain extra knowledge in their favorite filed which will help him//her in finding a favourable job. According to Asatiani each training course in the fields of PR management, HR management, business administration and project management costs from GEl 180 to GEL 250 and lasts for at least a month.

The Job Fair was organized within The Job Counseling and Placement (JCP) project, implemented by the International Organization for Migration that, provides job counseling, referral and placement of the unemployed with particular outreach to IDPs. The project has created an employment facilitation network with JCP centers in seven regions of the country as well as Tbilisi, and plans to create additional job counseling and referral centers. It also reaches out to employers and works to place beneficiaries in vocational education programs.