22 September 2015
By Elaine Murphy
elaine@TheCork.ie
The annual CIT Careers & Employability Fair, hosted by the CIT Careers Sevice, will be held next Tuesday, (29th September) in the Student Centre on the Bishopstown Campus. The fair supports all CIT students exploring their options for, during, and after their studies, whether this includes graduate employment, further study, volunteering or travel.
The demand for the 2015 fair among employers means that students will have access to 82 stands, an increase of 11 stands compared to 2014. Bookings for the fair closed earlier than usual due to demand. This is a positive indication of the requirement for graduates among employers and the steady growth in opportunities.
Looking at the First Destinations Survey for the 2014 graduating class, 88% of graduates were either in employment (57%) or further study (31%). An additional 2% of the 2014 cohort were in employment compared to 2013, which implies a more sustainable improvement in the graduate labour market.
Companies will attend from various industry sectors such as IT, Pharmaceutical, Medical Devices, Food, Engineering, Manufacturing, Finance, Telecommunications and Retail, among others.Many companies continue to return to the fair each year including PepsiCo, Kingspan, Johnson & Johnson, Musgrave Group, Analog Devices, EMC, VMWare, Glanbia, BioMarin, EY, Boston Scientific, and Enterprise Rent-A-Car, to name but a few.
As well as this, we are delighted to welcome new organisations to the 2015 fair including eSentire, Ammeon, OpenText, Sanmina, ABEC and ABP Food Group.
In addition to the annual Careers & Employability Fair, CIT Careers Service works closely with employers throughout the year to support the professional development of students and graduates. One such employer, eSentire, the Canada-based cybersecurity company has already built a strong relationship with Cork Institute of Technology and the Careers Service since establishing its European HQ and Security Operations Centre in Cork. J. Paul Haynes, eSentire CEO acknowledges, “The field of cybersecurity is creating jobs across the globe at an astounding rate and is in high demand for talent. eSentire is impressed with the high calibre graduates from CIT and we have forged a relationship to support their great work through a bursary for the Department of Computing. Today’s cyberthreats are incredibly sophisticated and require top security analysts, with an equally sophisticated skill set, to combat these criminals. A job in the rapidly growing cybersecurity industry offers real challenges and real excitement, the cornerstones of a rewarding career. eSentire is proudly open for business in Ireland and actively recruiting the best of the best.”
On another positive note, representatives from the Johnson & Johnson group of companies will present the annual DePuy Synthes Scholarship at the fair. This scholarship will support a Biomedical Engineering student while completing their undergraduate degree studies in CIT. This year will also see the presentation of the inaugural Janssen Mechanical Engineering Scholarship Award. The winning students, Eveleen Clancy (DePuy Synthes Scholarship) and Tadhg Fitzgerald (Janssen Mechanical Engineering Scholarship) will receive their awards, along with members of their family, and a representative from each of their secondary schools.
