What’s New with KPU’s Career Development Centre

KPU’s Career Development Centre holds the largest fair on campus: The annual Career Fair, which will be happening on March 11 and 12 on the Richmond and Surrey campuses respectively. It gives students the opportunity to meet with over 40 employers from various industries.

“The focus here is more for students who are getting ready to go off into the work roles after finishing up their programs,” says Julia Denker, the director of the CDC.

The CDC is the university’s main source of employment for students and alumni. Its purpose is to help them pursue a meaningful and fulfilling career.

As written on its website, “the Career Development Centre connects students with employers and community partners. [It supports] students to become employment-ready through job postings, volunteer opportunities, co-operative education and career advising.”

Co-operative education is one of the main services provided by CDC, and these kinds of opportunities are currently available in a variety of programs from accounting and criminology to entrepreneurial leadership and environmental protection.

“What we do here is we have a coordinator and two officers, and we do all the administrative work just to make sure that students have a really good experience” says Denker.

All these postings are available on Career Connection, which can be accessed online. Denker describes it as KPU’s biggest job board.

“With our job posting sites, we post all kinds of work opportunities, so some of them are co-op and some of them are just regular jobs that students might need during their school year just to help with the budget,” she says. “Some of them are potentially opportunities for when students graduate.”

The CDC also provides various career services that include resume and cover letter-writing and interview workshops.

According to the list of services on the CDC website, It also “assists employers by facilitating on-campus recruitment,” and it both “connects employers and students through social networking systems” and “provides individual work search assistance to students upon request.”

In order to make sure they’re prepared to enter competitive job markets, the CDC also conducts mock interviews with students, so they can sharpen their skills and prepare for the hiring process.

The CDC hosts many events aside from the career fair. Anyone interested in volunteering can reach out to the centre about upcoming mock interview sessions, capstone presentations, and Bell Let’s Talk Day. A mini career fair for the faculty of health will also be held on Jan. 31.