Arriving just before 9 a.m., it was a quick pick-up of the conference kit by preregistered last names before heading straight over to the John Bassett theatre just before the introduction to Maytree founder Ratna Omidvar. She and two or three other IEPs shared their success stories with a crowd of what seemed like thousands in the auditorium.
I got to sit next to Innocent, an estimator from Nigeria who's been here for 10 months and has had a tough time breaking into his field of work.
At break time, there were coffee, tea, and cookies (help yourself to peanut butter, chocolate, chocolate chip, etc.). Delegates were free to visit the myriad exhibitors in the Marketplace, representing social and career assistance agencies, government offices, universities and colleges, and employers galore. It was difficult not to make comparisons favourably against the last several job fairs we went to.
Hao, Michael, Nuray, Raymond, Senay, and Xiuli were there, toting their loot bags and gathering hopefully useful information from the various booths. We kicked about the idea of meeting for lunch but decided against anything fixed.
The breakout session I attended was on business services, focusing on HR management. While the panelists went on and on, I spotted the French interpretor in a sound booth but no one around with a headset! Feeling the lack of relevance to my interests, I headed back to the exhibition area to browse some more.
Lunch would not be long. Even then, how thoughtful of the organizers to have a chewy granola bar included in the kit consisting of conference bag, name tag with schedule and workshop info, reading material, and a USB memory stick preloaded with presentations!
And then it was lunch. There was nothing shabby about those mountains of boxed lunches on long tables offering a choice of roast beef, turkey, tuna, or vegan wrap, with a variety of drinks and desserts. Finding a niche next to a water dispenser, I got to talk to Sanjit, from Delhi, who drops in from his flexible-time bank job downtown every year just to rub shoulders with other new immigrants! Even though he hadn't registered, he got the free lunch--full marks for an entrepreneurial spirit.
This morning, I went to the IEP Conference with a copy of 24 Hours and Metro news and no breakfast. I left the conference with a free lunch and a loot bag laden with not just the basics but also job opportunities (e.g. Census 2011), cultural guide books, business opportunities (e.g. in Northern Ontario), and freebies better than any job fair's so far--winter scarf, card-sized magnifiers, pens to last a year, writing pads, and more.
Hopefully, the other 20 classmates will be there for next year's IEP Conference if they haven't already gotten a job by then.
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