On 19th March 2013, the Career Services Office at Ashesi organised its biggest career fair, attracting over a 100 recruiters representing some 60 companies from different industries across Ghana and Africa. Organisations present at this year’s fair included Guinness Ghana, Viasat 1, Tullow Ghana, General Electric, Beige Capital, SMSGh, Energy Bank and UT Holdings (Click here to see a full list of organisations)
The Ashesi career Fair is a one-day event that brings the entire Ashesi community (students, alumni, faculty an staff) together with representatives from industry to interact at various career development levels and to understand what challenges and opportunities exist in the work environment, thereby creating a platform for recruiting students and alumni of Ashesi. Sponsors for this year’s event were Nescafe, Vodafone Ghana, Guinness Ghana, General Electric, Tullow Oil, UT Holdings, SMSGh, Beige Capital, Viasat1, Energy Bank and SCG Consulting.
Employers at the event mentioned that the students they interacted with asked great questions, and were some of the best-prepared students they had ever met. “After interacting with several Ashesi students, we have concluded that the university’s graduates act professionally, are confident, respectful of the value of time and demonstrate good understanding of industry,” said Bijou Doe, Human Resource Manager at Total Petroleum Ghana. He also said “We have followed the development of students trained at Ashesi and are convinced of the quality and generally of the values and attitudes imparted in the university education and training. This is the reason why Total has decided to be a permanent Gold sponsor for the Annual Ashesi Career Fair moving forward.”
Several companies conducted spot interviews for jobs and internships, and members of this year’s graduating class had a chance to get a foot in the door early. "The career fair was a great opportunity for students, including myself, to network with people from the corporate world, and to gain insight on what employers expect from students,” said freshwoman Vanessa Amoako. “It gave me a stronger sense of available career opportunities and I feel more confident about interacting with business professionals now”—she said.
Several competitions were also run as the career fair progressed, the biggest being the ‘Assessment Center’, which presented different stages of job screening simulation to see how well participating students would fare in a real interview situation. Andrew Arde-Acquah ’13 won top prize for this competition, receiving Ghc500 from Nestle Ghana, and an iPod from Guinness Ghana Limited. 
“The annual career fair is about creating opportunities for networking, brainstorming business ideas and giving organizations one of the many avenues to announce and advertise job and internship openings,” said Mrs. Ophelia Sam, Associate Director of Career Services at Ashesi. “This year’s career fair kept this focus even though the number of organizations and the diversity of industries increased by 11% over last year’s.”
Sponsors for the 2013 Ashesi Career Fair
