Southland Career Progression Manager, Chelsea Donnelly, has been quite busy over the past few weeks. She's been representing the horticulture sector at the jobbortunity expos, talking with secondary school students across the region, signing up interns with orchards and confirming new courses locally and nationally. Whew! She's even found the time to give us an update on her work.
Otago students keen on seasonal jobs
Recently I attended Clutha, Otago Uni and Queenstown Jobbortunity expos under the banner of career promotion as well as the Summerfruit NZ Handpicked campaign for seasonal workers. There was a good number of growers from our region across these expos who were taking names and registrations for seasonal work directly.
Turn out across the regions at these expos was mixed, with the best being at the Otago Uni with approx 450 students turning up to find out about summer work, while Clutha had approx 115 jobseekers. Queenstown was interesting in that there was moderate numbers (approx 290) turn up on the day. The door registrations indicate that 63% of these were migrant workers looking for options and information about essential work visas, however, on the day it appeared that were a lot less than 37% of those attending being residents looking for work. Potentially the registrations did not capture all the visa holders.
Handpicked campaign in Queenstown
Of those that attended, plenty were signing up to orchards and taking home information on seasonal work (Work the Seasons flyers), however there was not the expected turn out of Kiwis looking for re-deployment. Official numbers and follow up will occur to clarify exact numbers and results of the expos.