Hiring Fair hosts employers with open positions to fill
There are two main rules for employers looking to participate in NAIT’s Hiring Fair, says Student Life manager Courtney Warren:
- Employers must be actively hiring for open positions.
- Those positions must be career starters: entry level is fine, but they need to pay well.
Given current employment stats, it would be easy to think those rules could put companies off. Rates for youth point to a tight job market. In Alberta in December 2025, unemployment for those 15 to 24 years old (which accounts for more than half of NAIT 2025-26 credit-program students) was a lofty 14.5%.
That’s better than the 20.3% spike in July, but not as good as the roughly 10% lows of mid-2022.
As it turns out, however, the rules have not kept employers away from Hiring Fair. If anything, they're even more interested.
When Warren arrived at NAIT in 2024, the event that March comprised about 20 companies that set up tables in NAIT’s Feltham Centre. “Can we dream a little bigger?” she wondered.
The next event, with promotion by Warren and the Career Advising team, grew to 40 employers.
That growth hasn’t stopped. In October 2025, NAIT hosted a Hiring Fair for nearly 60 employers and an estimated 1,000 students. Now, for the first time, two more events will be staged before the end of the academic year – for a total of some 200 campus appearances by employers.
Biggest event of its kind
The latest iteration of Hiring Fair – the largest in the polytechnic’s history – will see the Feltham Centre taken over on Jan. 29 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. by nearly 80 employers. Some are repeat participants, while others have joined by way of connections through academic staff.
They’ll fill the entire main floor of the building, spilling out of the open area known as the Crossing, stretching along an adjacent strip called Main Street, and wrapping around into the Square, the building’s cafeteria.
Warren expects another 1,000 students, and, since the campus doors are open to everyone, alumni and visitors from the community.
“For students, we encourage them to prepare in advance of the event,” says Warren. The Career Services team helps with that. During the week before the January fair, NAIT career advisers held sessions to review students’ resumés and – with the help of volunteers from industry – even talked them through mock interviews.
Those sessions can pay off, notes Warren. “Some employers actually might hire on the spot.”
As those two rules imply, that has been known to happen. Following October’s event, a survey showed that 88% of attending employers had “met potential candidates for future opportunities.”
Better still, 88% said they “recruited candidates for open positions."
The future of Hiring Fair
Because there’s only so much square footage to go around, about 40 employers couldn’t be included in the January fair at the Feltham Centre. But they’re not being excluded either.
Instead, Warren and her team will accommodate them with an unprecedented third event in the same space in March. (That will also help meet demand from the 90% of surveyed students who said they’d come to future fairs).
The latest and largest event will test an expanded layout, and maybe determine optimal size. Whatever number of employers that is, Warren believes that the three events set a new standard for NAIT. There’s available space, employers who need grads with hands-on experience, and students wanting reassurance that there is a promising future – and maybe a waiting job – for them upon graduation.
“We know that it's meaningful,” says Warren. “So we're going to keep doing it.”