The coronavirus has changed our professional lives in many ways, especially for white-collar workers… Photo credit: Freepik.
The coronavirus has changed our professional lives in many ways, especially for white-collar workers who toil in open-space offices. Most have started to work from home, with sweatpants and a lot of Zoom meetings. Commutes may have disappeared, but so have water-cooler discussions about the last Zbrojovka game, beers after work and holiday parties.
Similarly, the restrictions against the spread of the coronavirus has affected the way that people find jobs. Long gone are the days that you could simply walk up to a receptionist and leave your C.V. Nor is it normal to stop by a literal job board, like what has existed at the Centrum Department store near Malinovského náměstí. Word of mouth still exists. And LinkedIn is a common way to reach out. But the popular and efficient job fairs — where one could mingle at different employer booth and construct personal fantasies about the future — have been suspended because of the ban on social gatherings.
Instead, like many of the actual jobs themselves, job fairs have moved online.
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The Jobspin Virtual Job Fair will take place this Wednesday to Friday. Each day, from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., jobseekers can visit online booths to get information about employment opportunities. Then, for seven additional days, the booths and infrastructure will be available to post C.V.s and make additional inquiries. It’s free for jobseekers (and even job-just-lookers).
Click here for more information. Click here to register.
Jobspin, which was founded in 2014 in Brno, maintains an online job board for foreigners in the Czech Republic. If you are looking for a vertical move, or if you just want something different and would settle for a lateral move, it has many available options.
Though this job fair will be online, it will be an effective meeting place for both those looking for work and companies looking to hire.
“This will still provide the human interaction,” said Kateřina Casadei, the Sales and Marketing Manager of Jobspin. “It simulates the real-life event as much as possible.”
About 20 large, multinational companies, like Amazon, Infosys and Novartis, will have virtual booths where potential new-hires can sort through hundreds of job vacancies in industries that range from fintech to medical to support positions at all types of companies.
Chat with representatives. Provide your C.V. Set up an interview. Make an impression. Or, if you are in college, just get the lay of the land and take notes for the future.
Several seminars and presentations will be live-streamed, including workshops on career development and presentations by experts on visas, relocation and the job market.
And, though this is a work-around for a difficult public health situation, there are actually some advantages to being online. For example, there is no need to travel and more flexibility for when (and how often) you can visit. You don’t even need to brush your teeth — although you should still dress appropriately and make sure that your background is acceptable in case you get some face-time that could pave the rest of your professional career.
“At a traditional job fair you need to bring several copies of your C.V. and it may not be focused to a specific job,” Casadei said. “Now you have your version electronically and with one click you can send it. Or, you can make some adjustments to match the position, and then send it.”
The official language of the job fair is English. Register or follow #JVF2020 on social media for fresh updates.
The registration form takes less than 30 seconds to complete. Instructions and the event access code will be sent prior the job fair. Each jobseeker will create a simple profile that they want to show at the different booths, including photo, professional background, education, and C.V.
Each employer booth will be listed on the site. Click on the booth to visit it. Each will have basic information. Most will have videos about the company. And all will have representatives prepared to chat and set up face-to-face meetings.
Published in support of a partner project. Brno Daily is a media partner of Jobspin Job Fairs.
