March 16, 2016 – Over 50 organisations from various industries in Ghana took part in the tenth Ashesi Career Fair, organized by the Career Services Office. Sponsors of this year’s event included Tullow Ghana Limited, General Electric, Ghana National Petroleum Corporation, Millward Brown, BEIGE Academy, Dalex Finance, Genkey, Societe Generale Ghana, VOTO Mobile, Development Alternatives Incorporated (Africa Lead II), Databank Financial Services Limited and Kaysens Groupe of Companies.
The Ashesi Career Fair is a one-day annual event that brings the entire Ashesi community (students, alumni, faculty and staff) together with representatives from various organisations to interact at various career development levels. The fair helps the community gain an appreciation of the challenges and opportunities that exist in the professional environment and also creates a platform for organisations to recruit Ashesi students and alumni.
“It was a great session, especially seeing a variety of new and even smaller companies here at the fair, as opposed to just the traditional ones,” said Afua Aidoo ’11, Commercial Operations Leader (Healthcare), General Electric. “It was also a great opportunity to see what other companies are doing to draw from the same talent pool as we are. I also found the quality of engagement from students incredibly amazing. They are doing amazing things outside the classroom and also coming up with ways to keep themselves abreast with what’s happening in the world today.”
The fair had a number of panel sessions and competitions that run alongside. The Speed Interviews, Alumni Stand and Faculty-Employer panels gave students, faculty and employers a chance to engage with one another and share expectations with regards to the professional world. The competitions including Best Enterprising Pitch, Personal Branding and the Elevator Pitch tested students’ skills in public speaking, personal grooming and business etiquette.
“The speed interviews gave me exclusive and direct contact to employers in trying to secure jobs and internships,” said Nana Yaw Akonnor ’16. “The earlier series of interviews helped me improve on strengths and weaknesses that I was able to apply to subsequent interviews within the same session. Some of the new initiatives like the Student – Employment interaction were also very helpful; giving us the chance to learn about the expectations employers have of students.”
“I have experienced five Career Fairs to date and each year the fair simply gets better and better,” said Abigail Welbeck, Assistant Director of Career Services. “This year the Career Services team decided to seek out novel ways to ensure greater employer satisfaction at the fair and so we introduced speed interviewing, a faculty – employer roundtable discussion as well as a student– employer roundtable discussion. By this we also ensured more participation from the Ashesi community. The fair was a great success and we definitely could not have achieved this without the help of the Ashesi community, our cherished sponsors, distinguished judges and guest speakers. We look forward to an even greater fair next year as we will be taking key lessons from our 'employer evaluations' of this year’s fair, to increase our employer outreach and also invite more engineering firms.”
At the end of the fair, the Career Service recognized sponsors of the event while students who excelled in the various competitions were presented with awards.
