Academic City College, a premium quality tertiary institution at Haatso, in Accra, has organised a Career Fair to create a platform for students to network with companies across the Continent to guide their career choices.
The Career Fair was to secure internship opportunities for the students, which will grant them the experience they need to be successful in their professional lives.
It was organised by the Career Services Department, under the Office of the Student and Community Affairs, to help students to gain a greater appreciation of the professional opportunities available to them to develop their career potentials.
It welcomed representatives from 28 companies including General Electric, Ecobank, Vodafone, Kosmos Innovation Centre, Databank Financial Services, MainOne, Unilever, Growth Mosaic, Primetime, and Universal Merchant Bank.
The students interacted with the different companies to learn more about their activities and how they could help in their career interests.
Prior to the Fair, students had undergone a series of career-readiness sessions to prepare and equip them with the know-how and tools they needed to effectively seek internship opportunities at the Career Fair.
The sessions included a CV writing workshop, developing their elevator pitch, interviewing, identifying their preferred jobs and places of employment, and cleaning and boosting their social media and professional profiles.
Mr Abubakar Sulemana, the Chief Information Officer of General Electric (GE), Africa, shared some personal lessons about hard work, humility, and goal-setting that had helped him to chart his successful career.
GE works with governments, corporate customers, and other stakeholders to find solutions to infrastructural challenges in power, healthcare, oil and gas.
Mr Sulemana said his work at the GE focused on driving technology solutions to provide better services for clients to generate revenue.
As the Chief Information Officer for Africa, he drives GE’s strategic Information Technology programmes on the Continent.
In an interview with the Ghana News Agency, Mr Isaac Thierry N’Kouka, a sophomore studying IT, said; “I think this Career Fair has been a good initiative by Academic City to help students like me to have an idea of what is waiting for us out there once we get out of university.”
“Although I don’t have much on my CV, I quickly realised that what really matters is the first impression I made,” said Mary Gaewu, a Computer Science and Engineering student.
“The whole experience was amazing because I got to learn more about each company and what they do, to help me to figure out my career path.”
Academic City College plans to host similar and larger career fairs on an annual basis.
As a follow-up to this event, the Career Services Department would embark on achieving the next milestone of converting the fair’s interactions into actual internship opportunities for students for summer 2019.