Ms. Gutterman
Students were able to navigate the gym and speak to various professionals throughout the day.
On Thursday, Apr. 10, Cardozo hosted its 12th annual career fair for junior and seniors. The event, which took place in Cardozo’s large gym, ran through the entire school day, as students attended with their phys. ed. classes. Juniors and seniors were able to walk around and speak to the over 70 professionals in attendance, gain insight to future pathways, and collect information from those who were there.
Ms. Kierez, Assistant Principal of English, Dance, and Library Media Sciences, explained that although the career fair was promoted as the “7th annual,” it was really the 12th annual. They had taken out the three years that the school lost when the city had gone remote for Covid.
However, Ms. Kierez feels very connected to the career fair, sharing, “This is my baby. I’ve been doing this when I started as a teacher and I love watching it grow.”
She also shared that it’s a way to build the community at Cardozo, with many of the school’s support staff like speech pathologists, occupational therapists, and physical therapists represented at the fair. In addition, she added that many people bring their spouses to represent their careers — Ms. Gutterman’s husband and Ms. Williams’ husband both brought their insight from their careers to students.
“[The career fair] is useful because juniors and seniors need to see what’s out there and speak to other adults who are in that profession, understand what the college situation is, and realize that you don’t have to go to college too,” Ms. Kierez explained. “There is the military, there are CTE programs, there are other programs, and there is a position and a career out there for everyone.”
Tamia Caruth, a representative from the Magic Fingers Natural Hair Institute, came for the second year in a row. She shared that she has been doing hair since she was a teenager, and it became a career for her when she realized how much she enjoyed doing it. She also shared that she finds it important for trade schools to be represented for teens today
“I feel like when I was back in the days in school, I did not have any trade schools come and visit my school and talk about anything outside of college,” Caruth said. “So, I do feel like it’s important for trade schools to come and tell teens that there are other options and opportunities besides college, especially since I didn’t finish college and I went to a trade school instead.”
Jennifer Sarmiento, an outreach coordinator from Common Point, has attended the career fair in the past, as well, and finds it important for students.
“It’s helpful because you get to explore different options, especially maybe if you decided that college is not the route for you maybe you want to do trade,” Sarmiento said. “When I younger, I wish I would have had these type of opportunities to kind of expand my knowledge of what careers are really out there, so I do definitely think it’s helpful that you guys have all of these resources here.”
Justin Nuñez, a senior, said that he’s thought about his future and wants to pursue a career in cybersecurity. Thankfully for him, the career fair had a lot of different options this year relating to that field.
“I’ve been interested in cybersecurity and a lot of the booths here actually deal with that. Like for example, the FBI booth has a specialty in cybersecurity and I’m thinking of applying next year when I’m in college,” he said. “There’s also compliance, which has another thing in cybersecurity, which also was really interesting.”
However Nuñez was surprised that there were other great careers represented, like Major League Baseball, and various military branches. He shared that these kind of events are good for students who want to network and find mentors.
“You can get mentors from this. You can get networking emails, business cards. It’s all really useful,” he shared. “And plus, let’s say you found someone that you really clicked with, you could send them an email and tell them that you met them at the career fair and that’ll like add leverage to whatever you’re emailing about.”
With such a successful career fair for another year, we’re certain that next year’s will grow to be just as great for future juniors and seniors at Cardozo.