I can’t believe we are entering into our third year of the State of Jobs Conference. Three years ago, when I first created the concept, I had no idea the community would embrace this idea of working together to help students prepare for college and careers. It’s been amazing to watch nearly 100 business, organizations and educational institutions come together to help provide funding for this event so we can keep the event completely free to students. To watch more than 125 speakers leaders in our community stand together to help educate students from all walks of life across our region. Lastly, the hundreds of hours our volunteers have worked together to make this event successful has been nothing short of amazing. The State of Jobs Conference has been great and we thank all who has been involved.
As we look to 2016, we are even more excited about the future of this event. For the first time, we are inviting middle school students to participate in their own day. The structure will be similar to the high school day except a bit shorter. This means we are expecting over 750 students between two days. We are very excited to continue our partnership in 2016 with Suncoast Technical College. They’ve been amazing at allowing us to take over their campus and provide resources to make sure our students have a great experience. We moved the conference to the fall to better align with the Sarasota County School’s schedule and to provide a more convenient time to plan with the students.
Another change we are making is the amount of tracks we are offering and the type of tracks we’re offering. Over the last two years, we’ve tried to identify what industries students are most excited about what can we do to cater to their future. This year we will have seven tracks including:
Healthcare
Marketing/Creative
Information Technology
Manufacturing/Engineering
Hospitality/Tourism
Arts/Culture
Business/Entrepreneurship
As you can see these are growing industries not only worldwide but here in Sarasota County and we’re excited to partner with the great businesses and organizations providing these services to our community. Students will have the opportunity to select one of these tracks and will not only get an opportunity to learn about these industries but participate in a group activity during one of their session to help them better understand the career choice.
Lastly, another exciting change we are making is a focus on characteristics related to these industries. So if a student is not quite sure what they are interested in but know they are interested in something like public speaking or leadership, then they can select a track that’s best showcases those characteristics.
We are very excited about the 2016 State of Jobs Conference. We hope you will have an opportunity to experience this amazing conference whether you are an attendee, volunteer, speaker, or sponsor.