Nigel Tutt Chief Executive of Priority One

Last week saw the Canvas Careers Expo take place at Bay Park Arena.

Canvas is a collaboration between Rotary of Tauranga and Priority One, and involves many local businesses and schools seeking to provide our youth with a wide understanding of the career and study paths available to them.

Canvas was run over two days, with around 5000 students and parents attending. Highlights included the high amount of local employer engagement, the preparedness of students to consider their careers, and some quality parent, student and employer discussions – particularly on the Saturday.

Employers and institutions went all out with interesting ways to engage students; the University of Waikato's marine biology display, Toi Kai Rawa's interactive tech zone and Fulton Hogan's digger simulator are just a few examples.

As readers of this column will have seen, it is really important for our economy to get youth into quality work pathways. This will vary for the individual based on their strengths, passions and aspirations, so we need to have a broad range of options – from becoming a lawyer or engineer to computer programming or horticulture.

This is especially important in a time where employers need all the staff they can get. We need as many people as possible in the workforce.

A sector that is very important to the economy at the moment is construction and infrastructure, where we have recently seen increased efforts to attract more employees.

There will be plenty of jobs available, with significant projects underway in the form of Takitimu North, Cameron Road and an increased amount of capital spend planned by Tauranga City Council and NZTA.

We are looking forward to another event taking place later this month - an industry open day to create further awareness around local job opportunities in construction and infrastructure.

It's pleasing to see the Tauranga Careers expo acknowledged as one of the most interesting and focussed in the country, and that's undoubtedly down to having highly engaged local employers.