Taking the first step towards a career focused on a specific skill set isn’t always easy, which is why job fairs are so important.
A large manufacturing-focused fair was held Tuesday at the Genesee County Fairgrounds in Batavia.
GLOW with Your Hands Manufacturing hosted more than 1,000 students from 30 school districts and over 70 exhibitors at its annual career exploration event, featuring businesses from across the GLOW region (Genesee, Livingston, Orleans and Wyoming counties) and representing major employers, labor unions, manufacturing, agriculture and construction industries.
“The focus of today’s event is really just getting kids to understand the incredible opportunities that exist in agriculture, skilled trades, advanced manufacturing and food processing right here in our region,” said Angela Glaus, co-chair of GLOW With Your Hands. “So the goal here is to give kids a kind of window into that world – to roll up their sleeves and let them lay a brick, let them hammer a nail, let them weld, let them operate a CNC machine, let them interact with veterinarians, let them examine animals – to get hands-on work experience.”
“If you’re going to college, you want to actually visit a college and see what it’s like,” Glaus continued, “You want to see what the world of work is like, you want to think, ‘Is this right for me?’ And we want kids to understand that whether they want to get into the workforce straight out of high school or go on to college to extend their higher education training or education, there are opportunities out there in the GLOW region.”
GLOW With Your Hands was launched in 2019.