Students and graduates hoping to find work still have options to choose from despite the pandemic and current lockdown restrictions.
Algonquin College currently provides all their students access to the HireAC job portal. Here students can find job postings ranging from administrative work, government positions, to landscaping and camp counselling. There are currently 19 job openings available. This can all be found on the ACSIS website.
The government of Canada is also providing several programs that students can access including the Ontario Public Service Careers, and Federal Student Work Experience Program for those who have a disability or are Indigenous.
Some government programs are even preparing to hire in masses. In May 2021, Statistics Canada will be hiring 32,000 individuals to be part of their large-scale national project in communities to collect data for the future.
While some sectors have taken a hit, many are still providing employment opportunities.
Kristina Johnston, acting manager at the Employment Support Centre at Algonquin College, she touches on some of those fields affected by the pandemic.
In and email, she explains the past 10 months, there have been weekly fluctuations in the type and number of postings on our online job board HireAC. Industries that have been actively hiring in high volumes throughout the pandemic include healthcare (ex: nursing, personal support worker, dental hygienist, and registered massage therapist), animal care (ex: veterinary technician), cybersecurity and IT, civil engineering and administration.
Johnston expects these trends to continue into the summer. Other sectors have been more negatively affected by the pandemic. These include hospitality and retail.
Nikolas Massie, a first-year business marketing student at Algonquin College, knows firsthand the impacts of COVID after being laid off from Restaurant E18hteen earlier this year.
“Yeah, unfortunately because of COVID I lost my job. I’ve found it pretty difficult to find work with everything going on,” said Massie.
Despite the setback, he remains optimistic after hearing what the college has to offer.
“I wasn’t aware that the school had something like that. I mean, it’s always nice that the government is offering something,” said Massie. “But what the school has is definitely something that I’ll be checking out in the future. That’s great.”
Any Algonquin College students currently looking for work, visit https://www.algonquincollege.com/employment/hireac for more information.