2020 Career Fair While Corona’s in the Air

What is a career fair? If you’ve never heard of it before, here’s the answer for you. Career fair is the college counseling team plans every year. In this project juniors work in groups to introduce unusual and unpopular careers to other members of the GZAAT community. This year, because of COVID-19, the format of the project changed and instead of live presentations, students had to take videos that were judged by the special team. The videos that got “high pass” and “excellent” will get to special “Career fair base” and stay there, so next generations will be able to see them.

Career Fair 2019

To get a better understanding of the process, there has been an interview with the team of organizers - Marika Tsitskishvili, Keti Chikovani and Marina Japaridze and and one of the viewers Nana Gabelia

Interviewer: First of all, can you tell us what are the main goals of career fair and why are you doing it?

Marika Tsitskishvili: the goal of the project is to give you an opportunity to get introduced with professions that are really unusual, so you will broaden your knowledge about different career opportunities.

Keti Chikovani: Another goal of the project is to help you get the skills that will help you to learn more about the profession that you are actually interested in. If students really worked responsibly on their task, I think that they should have gained the skills to find the information and resources about the career of their interest.

Interviewer:What were the main difficulties and benefits of shifting the project into online?

Marika Tsitskishvili: Of course, it was harder. First of all, because we put much more effort into bringing the information about the task correctly to you. When you have live communication with students it’s easier to introduce the task, answer all the questions and discuss all the details…

Marina Japaridze: Also, for us it’s important to know that this activity has real benefits for you. So, when you don’t see the real working process it’s hard to see whether you achieved your goal or not.

Marika Tsitskishvili: When it was in gym students were obliged to see others work while in this format there is less chance that one student will go and see every video.

Keti Chikovani: But because it was online and you were supposed to record the videos the work that you did was more academic.

Marika Tsitskishvili: Yes, but unfortunately the handmade visuals that students made last year were not included in the online videos.

Keti Chikovani: But some of the students had very creative and beautiful powerpoint presentations.

Nana Gabelia: The online regime showed all the weaknesses and strengths of students. It somehow brought students under magnifying glass.

Marika Tsitskishvili: The results showed how responsible students were while doing the task, better than it is usually visible during regular career fairs.So the responsibility really defined the quality of the videos.

Interviewer: In your opinion what were the major difficulties that students faced while working the project?

Nana Gabelia: I was not able to see thinking out-of-the box in these videos, students did not try to go out of their comfort zones.

Marina Japaridze: Of course, this was the problem but because it was online it was really hard to come up with creative solutions. The main goal was for students to answer all the requirements.

Keti Chikovani: I also agree with Nana, when it was in the gym students showed us more creativity. So, this was the main difficulty that students faced while making their videos.

Interviewer: How will the format of the project change in the future, will students be assigned to make videos or will it be the way it was happening previously?

Keti Chikovani: The videos are the great opportunity to keep and pass the knowledge to future generations. But when this is happening in the gym, students whether they want it or not, they are looking at others’ work, which is hard to manage in an online regime. So, in the future I think it will be in combination.

To get a better idea of what students think about this activity, the anonymous google form was sent to the class of 2022.

The results are the following:

Most of the students wrote that the hardest part was finding the resources, especially about Georgia, because there is not enough data, and some professions do not even exist in our country. For many students, the fact that they were not interested in their career was the problem, because completing the task became less exciting. Some students also complained about technical difficulties, such as screen recording, video editing, finding appropriate visuals etc. Also, 63.3% of students admitted that it was hard to come up with a creative way present.

The leaders of two groups, Kato Sulkhanishvili and Mariam Beshidze, were interviewed for even more thoughts about the topic. Both of them had very unusual professions, Kato had Textile Surface Design and Mariam had Demolition and Restoration Management in the Build Environment.

Interviewer: What did the planning process look like?

Kato: First, we started researching information on our own, individually. Then we combined all this information and made sure that we all knew what the profession was about. After, we divided information into parts and each learned our own part. We also brainstormed how we were going to record beforehand and then got together to record the video.

Mariam: We tried to divide tasks equally. All of us searched for information about our profession. Then, I edited and combined the text, another member drew a beautiful picture, and the other two worked on the video.

Interviewer: Was it hard to find resources?

Kato: It was especially hard to find resources about Georgia, since there aren’t many websites available that provide information about this profession. So, we called some places and contacted people who helped us to complete the project. But still, even though this process was difficult it was really interesting.

Mariam: It was quite hard, because only one university in the world has the major we were presenting about. Also, in Georgia there was no information. We tried to find demolition companies, but there are not such types of agencies in our country. Then, one of our teammates contacted the construction manager, and even though our career and this field aren’t the same, with his help we still get an idea how this field would work in Georgia.Also, there is no data about Europe on the internet. So, our presentation was mostly based on the information that we got from the website of the university.

Interviewer: Did you find your profession interesting?

Kato: Personally I am not really interested in this topic or profession. It was interesting to find out what it is and how it works, but I don’t think I’d want to do it in the future.

Mariam: It was not interesting for me, because my interests are way far from this profession. In the beginning we were thinking that our work was a waste of time, because, in our opinion, no one would get interested in this field. But when we started working on this project, we found some interesting details.

Interviewer: What skills did you gain from working on this project?

Kato: One of the most important skills that I gained from the project was to find information outside of the internet and it showed me that finding information by communicating with other people can be very helpful and interesting!

Mariam: I gained research skills, because it was hard to find much information about this profession. I don’t think that I’ve gained many skills, because I had many useful ones needed for this project already. But I think working on this project was an interesting experience, as I learned video making. Also, I had to work on the text a lot, so I improved my skills in this field as well.

So as the juniors of GZAAT tell this project has been quite interesting, along with its difficulties and the changes of format. They have gained useful knowledge and skills and for a lot of them interesting experiences. Well, let’s see how the rules of the game change for the next year, and sophomores, hope you were taking notes, cause you’re next!

Edited by Keta Tavartkiladze