Careers and Futures Expo a huge success
Hundreds of current and prospective students have heard from dozens of industry, education and career pathways experts at the inaugural Careers and Futures Expo in Shepparton on August 25.
GOTAFE’s Fryers Street Campus was buzzing with excitement this week about the future – and present – with information and expertise available for all stages of the education journey, from the first steps into study to exploring career and higher education opportunities.
Leaning on the broader knowledge and community connections of Northern Victoria Institute of TAFE (NVITAFE) as one if its delivery partners – alongside Wodonga TAFE – GOTAFE brought together over 30 industry, higher education and career pathways representatives to ensure all attendees found something to suit them at the Expo.
“We’ve seen such a broad range of individuals here today,” NVITAFE Executive Director – Services Education and Student Experience Luke Surace said.
“We’ve got people from schools who are looking at their future, we’re also seeing people who are currently working and looking to upskill so they can take their career to the next level and also people that are looking at different career changes or entering back into the workforce.
“It’s been a great event here at the Careers and Futures Expo, helping people understand the pathways in to TAFE but also pathways out either into industry and the workforce or some of our other education partners like La Trobe University and Charles Sturt University.”
Current GOTAFE students also enjoyed the event, with Aldo Curka and Brodie Alexander – both studying IT in Shepparton – among the cohort checking out the Expo.
“We were just interested to see what it was all about,” they said.
Watters Electrical People and Culture Coordinator Andrea McNab was happy with the timing of the Expo – with the business looking to employ another round of local apprentices in the near future.
“We’ve had a number of mature age applicants who are interested in doing an apprenticeship, so they’re people who are already working in an existing field – one gentleman was IT – and he really wanted to know…what skill set he needed and whether the current degree that he holds is something that he can use in an application to work as an apprentice,” she said.
“We have three sites in Shepparton, Wangaratta and Albury and we currently employ about 67 apprentices across the business, and we look at putting on about 20 new apprentices every year.”