Labour Dept. trains youths to hold jobs
By historical standards, unemployment in Belize is near an all time low. But statistics won’t feed your family when you are among the thousands of Belizeans still without a job. Today I attended a session designed to help improve the odds of landing meaningful employment.
Jacqueline Godwin, Reporting
They may not have any work as yet, but this group of nineteen young men and women are taking the necessary steps to become employed. The job seekers are learning how to be customer friendly and professional.
Merilyn Young, Natl. Coordinator, Employment/Enterprise Dev.
“The training today is to assist the job seekers that are looking for jobs as cashiers, sales clerks, secretaries, receptionists because we find that that is a weakness that a lot of them have that we hear employers saying that you know what, yes we have people who are looking for jobs but they do not know how to sell the product or don’t have good customer service relations.”
The National Coordinator for Employment and Enterprise Development, Merilyn Young says since the Labour Department started offering the service the results have been encouraging. According to Young, on average about sixty persons a week have been hired in various sectors across the country.
Merilyn Young
“We do from picking oranges to picking papayas to working on boats as stevedores, secretaries, part-time, full-time jobs. We have people that have gotten jobs part-time and ended up full time.”
The goal is to have all prospective employees fully prepared for the job market.
Merilyn Young
“Some people would see ads in the newspaper and they would come in early Monday morning, you see them lined up, “Ms. Young I see these two jobs, I need help to apply for them.” And we help them make sure they have everything together, the letter, the resume is selling who they are.”
“So we are finding now that some employers are coming to us first as a stepping stone not to deal with all of that.”
In addition to these special sessions, the Employment and Enterprise Development Unit conducts job preparedness training every Friday at locations across the country. The unit encourages job seekers to attend and register and employers to consider it their first stop in recruitment of employees.
