Nova Scotia Health (NSH) is the province’s largest employer, and on Friday more than 3,000 job seekers attended the organization’s first provincial career fair.
Hosted at 11 locations throughout the province, attendees showed up to learn more about the 4,000 vacant positions at NSH. Managers staffed job information sessions in Amherst, New Glasgow, Truro, Sydney, Inverness, Antigonish, Sheet Harbour, Halifax, Bridgewater, and Yarmouth.
In Halifax, more than 400 people came through the doors during the first 90 minutes of the face-to-face expo held in a large room at the Nova Centre.
Diverse range of job openings
Lauren Murphy, director of recruitment and volunteer services for NSH, said most people don’t realize the diverse range of job openings available.
“Yes, 1,000 of those positions are for registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, and nurse practitioners. Obviously hiring internationally educated nurses will be a big part of that,” Murphy said in an interview.
“But we also have positions to fill in information technology (IT), clinical engineering, pharmacy, medical lab technology, mental health, housekeeping, and food services. And we welcome high school students and retired people who wish to volunteer.”
People being contacted this week
More than 27,000 people work in NSH-operated facilities. Murphy said the goal of the career fair was to open conversations between managers who have vacancies and job seekers interested in finding out if their skills and experience are a good fit.
Instead of filling out a formal job application, career fair participants were encouraged to scan a QR code with their cell phones. The code opened a short survey asking the potential employee to provide contact information and the field they want to work in.
Murphy said that beginning this week, her team of more than 100 people would begin contacting every person who scanned the QR code.
‘Get a foot in the door’
The Halifax Examiner spoke with Tiffany Shi who was using her knowledge of Mandarin to help some recent arrivals from China understand how to apply for a job here.
Shi is a third-year nursing student at Dalhousie who moved to Nova Scotia from China 12 years ago. She said she has been an NSH employee for seven years. Her first job was working as a supervisor in clinical nutrition. She said her second job was in the staffing office doing scheduling for nurses.
“Now I am training to be a nurse because I like to help people and there are lots of jobs. I think this type of fair is a good idea because many immigrants don’t know where to apply for a job. Right now, Nova Scotia Health is looking to hire more supporting staff,” Shi said.
“This is good for newcomers who maybe don’t have a license yet or don’t have a lot of English. They can start like me in an entry level job, delivering food to the patients. Or work somewhere else in the supply chain to get a foot in the door.”
Speaking of open jobs and previously reported work, might be good to look at why the Adult Neurodevelopmental Stabilization Unit (formerly emerald hall) has THREE openings for therapeutic assistants (and the shifts tend to run about 4 TAs per 4 hour time block). Seems like a unit with a particular lot of turnover.
I hope that some of them are hired in our housekeeping, maintenance and bio-medical engineering departments. Some of the delays in patient flow are related to a shortage of housekeeping staff on evenings and back shift. Those departments Chronically short-staffed. There has been maintenance work waiting to get done for almost two years on some Nursing Units. Any carpenters at that job fair I wonder?