Government recruitment and vocational training booths spotlight Education and Careers Expo

Last week’s Education and Careers Expo at the Exhibition Centre highlighted government job offerings and employment training as the city hopes to retain young talents and boost the local workforce.

Among the 123 exhibitors at the expo, 32 of them were government departments and bureaus present at the event, which aimed to introduce visitors to job opportunities through exhibitions, sharing sessions and interactive activities.

“As the largest employer in Hong Kong, offering over 190,000 full-time jobs in the civil service alone, the government has a wide range of opportunities for those who are willing and ready to work hard and keep learning to achieve success,” said Ingrid Yeung, Secretary for the Civil Service, at the opening ceremony of the Expo.

Various government departments also held information and sharing sessions throughout the expo, such as the Civil Service Bureau for the legal aid department.

“I’ve had more opportunities to ask questions regarding the job content, interview and selection criteria, so I think [the Expo] is quite helpful to me,” said Tiffany Cheung, 23, a fresh university graduate looking for a job in the government. “I think [the information session] is quite clear, and the speaker made very clear about the content of the position. It matches my expectation regarding the role.”

Apart from recruitment booths, many schools for continuing education and vocational training  introduced education programs and showcased new innovations that could streamline existing work methods.

One example was the Smart Chinese Medicine Cabinet, a Chinese medicine pharmaceutical box which aims to streamline the collection of ingredients for Chinese medicine recipes using sensor technology. By scanning the QR code, the display modules on each drawer would light up and show the ingredients required for the pharmacists to collect.

The cabinet is part of the Vocational Training Council’s health and life science course.

“As a vocational education institution, we always emphasise on how to pass down these technologies to future generations,” said a VTC representative from the Pro-Act Training and Development Centre (Electronics). “By showcasing this technology, we’re showcasing how we can fuse new technologies with Chinese medicine, to make the pharmaceutical operations easier and more efficient.”

According to the Census and Statistics Department, Hong Kong’s unemployment rate stood at 2.9% in the fourth quarter of 2023, while the total workforce shrank by around 8,600 to 3.81 million compared to the period of September to November 2023.

At the 2023 Policy Address, Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu said that “Hong Kong will prosper only when its young people thrive” and vowed to boost the nurturing of the local young vocational talent pool. Lee also introduced measures aimed at employee retraining to strengthen the local workforce amid the continuous brain drain, such as raising monthly retraining allowance and allowing employers to arrange enterprise-based pre-employment training.

“Hong Kong's treasure lies in its people,” said Yeung. “Their efforts have contributed to the success of Hong Kong, a success that has brought us prosperity and high world rankings in many areas.”