By LETRE SWEETING

Tribune Staff Reporter

lsweeting@tribunemedia.net

LABOUR Director Robert Farquharson said many job seekers are unprepared for the job market –– not knowing how to write resumes, do interviews or dress.

His comment came after saying hundreds of jobseekers have registered to attend an employability workshop and job fair.

The Department of Labour, in conjunction with The National Training Agency (NTA) on Gladstone Road, will be sponsoring an employability workshop under the theme “Resetting The Standards for Job Success.” The workshop will take place on Tuesday and Wednesday at the NTC for registered participants.

The second day of the workshop will feature some 15 businesses interviewing jobseekers for employment. Registration for the workshop is open to the public at the department’s Facebook page or jobseekers.bahamas.gov.bs.

Mr Farquharson told The Tribune yesterday that about 200 persons have registered for the workshop.

“The primary purpose of the workshop is that we have found too that a number of jobseekers are not properly prepared to meet the job market,” he said. “They don’t know how to write resumés, they don’t know how to do interviews, they don’t know how to dress. So we have identified 200 of those persons and we’re going to bring them to the National Training Agency.”

Mr Farquharson said he hopes the employability workshop will give inexperienced job seekers the tools they need to know “how to present themselves before a potential employer and give them a better opportunity to find a job”.

“We’re preparing for about 250,” Mr Farquharson said. “The idea is to give these young people the skills to better prepare them for the job market and to give them an opportunity to find employment through proper interviews at the workshop.

“On the second day, we have a number of employers who are going to be participating. On the second day, they will hopefully be interviewed for jobs that are available. There are 15 employers that are going to join us on the second day.”

Other businesses partnered with the Department of Labour for this workshop include BTC, Imagine Greater 242, the Bahamas Society for Human Resource Management and JS Johnson Insurance Agents and Brokers.

The workshop is one of several employment initiatives hosted by the Department of Labour.

In January, the Ministry of Education and Technical and Vocational Training, the Department of Labour and other stakeholders, including Government High School, hosted the initial “Labour on Campus” event. The initiative comprised a series of career/job fairs to help 10th and 11th-grade students prepare for the job market.

In March, Mr Farquharson revealed that the Labour on the Blocks job fair series had resulted in employment for more than 3,000 Bahamian job seekers since May 2022.