New career options eyed

Education

STUDENTS attending the University of Technology (Unitech) in Lae have been urged to be innovative and have an entrepreneurial mindset.
This was the key message from the university’s head of Applied Science, Reilly Nigo, during the opening of Unitech’s career expo last Friday at the Taraka campus in Lae.
Nigo said companies today needed innovators and entrepreneurs and not just ordinary employees who reported to work at 8am and finished at 5pm.
“We must have marketable graduates,” Nigo said.
“We have graduates who are not going into innovation, who are not thinking positive, and who are so reserved.
“There are many connotations to that but we have to have ownership and vision of what we are doing.
“Apart from research and technology, the university is encouraging entrepreneurship and innovation.
“Once you have the mindset of innovation you see the value of what you are doing.”
Nigo said graduates must add value to the organisation they worked for by being innovative and entrepreneurial.
“We must not just think like scientists and engineers but we must think beyond that.”
Nigo said a stronger partnership between industry and the university was important in areas of research and technology development.
He said the university has received comments from industry members about the lack of innovation from graduates and that was one thing all stakeholders should be focused on addressing to ensure better results.
The Unitech career fair ran for two days and involved more than 12 companies giving information to students about what they did and informing them about graduate programmes and career pathways.
The chairperson of the career expo organising committee, Sandy Puy, said the aim of the fair was for organisations to promote their organizations’ career development programmes, employment pathways and also their products and services.
The theme of the event was: “Fifty years of nation building in human resource through effective partnerships.”
It reflected the university’s 50 years of providing tertiary education, mostly in the fields of science and technology to Papua New Guineans.
Some of the companies that participated at the career fair included Kumul Petroleum Holdings Limited, BMobile, Digicel, National Information and Communication Technology Authority, Coffee Industry Corporation, National Agriculture Research Institute, Coca-Cola, Job Seek PNG, Nestle and others.