Is getting a job in 2025 impossible?

No it is not, Laurier Brantford’s career centre has a plethora of resources for students, alumni and faculty to use

As a new semester begins for Laurier students, some entering their last semester of their university careers, the looming thoughts of getting into the job market and the desired industry start to creep in. A scary thought for sure, especially considering that as of November of 2024, the unemployment rate in Canada was 6.8 per cent – the highest it has been since Jan 2017 excluding 2020-2021. Many students may be feeling doomed heading out into the world and expected to find a job in this market.  

What can they do?  

Laurier Brantford’s career centre offers a glimmer of hope in uncertain employment times such as these, “Don’t struggle, book appointments,” says Angel Evans further education and employment consultant on the Brantford campus.  

Booking an appointment with the career centre to develop a plan, fine tune a resume or get some professional advice is always a great option, says Evans. The career centre is located at One Market 206-40 and is open from Monday to Friday 8:30 a.m. to 4: 30 p.m. Students can pre-book appointments with a consultant or same day appointments are available Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday afternoons. To book an appointment with the centre students, faculty and alumni can use the navigator on their website.  

Workshops for resume building run online in Brantford weekly. In this workshop attendees learn how to sharpen their resumes and how to tailor their resumes to the job description they are applying for. Tailoring resumes, says Evans, is a crucial step all job seekers should take the time to do in order to stand out from the hordes of resumes that employers receive daily. “Have a look at job description, pick out what skills they’re looking for and then make sure that you’re speaking to that. You might not have direct experience in an area, but likely you have a lot of transferable skills,” said Evans.  

Evans encourages students to look at the Laurier competency framework for a list of transferrable skills that Laurier students develop while completing their courses, “you’ve likely developed these skills over the course of your studies and demonstrated them in your academics or volunteer work or anything you were involved in and it is a great asset to be able to articulate that on your resume,” said Evans.  The competencies can be found on Laurier’s website.   

In addition, the career centre focuses on teaching students, alumni and faculty the difference between passive and active job searching. Passive job searching is applying to jobs on job boards like Indeed or LinkedIn and submitting a resume virtually. It is passive because there is no interaction between the employee and employer, all the work is done virtually. Active job searching, which Evans says is the better approach, is the art of networking. Networking is the practice of connecting with others for mutual benefit, either at a networking event, in class or at get involved fairs. Evans encourages, “everybody, from first year onwards to start networking, and making those connections, nurturing those connections as well and using tools and resources that are available to you.” 

Networking opportunities are not hard to find, the next event available to students is the Partnerships for Employment (P4E) job fair taking place on Jan 29 at Bingemans conference centre in Kitchener from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., students are encouraged to drop in at any time based on their class schedule. Laurier students and alumni are welcome to attend the event for free as long as they have a valid student/alumni ID, a shuttle will be provided and will leave from the Carnegie building at 9:10 a.m., and will leave the event at 1 p.m. To arrange the complimentary bus shuttle for Brantford, email careerbrantford@wlu.ca. The event will  feature over 60 potential employers looking for a range of opportunities, either co-op positions or full time employment after graduation.  

Another networking opportunity that is available for Laurier students is access to an account on Ten Thousand Coffees (10KC). 10KC is a virtual networking platform for people to find mentors or become mentors for people in the industry. Laurier Students have access to this platform through the career centre. If students are looking for a mentor to help them learn more about the field they are interested in, Evans highly recommends that students take advantage of this tool. 

Other tips that Evans suggests for students beginning to look at the job market are to keep LinkedIn profiles up to date and to use as many of the resources available while they are available.  


This article was originally printed in Volume 24, issue 5 on January 9, 2025.

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