Career Centre
HIEC's Career Awareness Program
HIEC’s Career Centre is open to all Halton students and adult education groups. We connect with over 9,000 students each school year for an opportunity to take part in “The Real Game” and conduct research on over 3,000 reliable occupational profiles.
The Real Game is a career explorations program designed to bring real life experiences to the classroom. Students complete 10-weeks of in-class sessions that culminate with a visit to the HIEC Career Centre. Here, they participate in self-awareness activities that tie their classroom experiences to self-directed occupational research. The students come away with a better understanding of working conditions, salaries, future trends, and post-secondary pathways for the jobs that interest them.
Key community partners for The Real Game program include:
- Halton Catholic District School Board
- Halton District School Board
- Attridge Transportation Inc
- Local rotary clubs
I found coming to the Career Centre really helped me take a little better understanding of the career world and that path I want to go. It helped me decide more of where I want to go with my life.
Student, Rolling Meadows Public School
Benefits for Educators
The program provides numerous measurable benefits to students, including:
- Meeting expectations of the Ontario Ministry of Education's Creating Pathways to Success and School Effectiveness Framework documents
- Exposure to myBlueprint and opportunities to complete 4 out of 5 IFF requirements
- Advancing understanding of personal learning styles, high school vocabulary and post-secondary options
- Gaining familiarity with five distinct post-secondary pathways
- Gaining experience in reflection and decision-making
- Developing research skills
The Real Game
Principles Underlying the Project:
- Student success.
- Engages students in a mentorship process with volunteer adults that provide young people with valuable real-world context and support for their learning. Mentorship programs offer a proven foundation for long-term success.
- Community demand.
- Fills an identified gap between short-term mentorship opportunities available at MACC & WACC events and the more formalized opportunities for employers and students available through school-based experiential learning.
- Volunteerism.
- Works with already engaged volunteer adults, leveraging MACC & WACC as platforms to raise awareness and build confidence in the value of the program.
- Inclusivity.
- After the gender-specific mentorship events, provides an opportunity for cross-audience mentorship, and continues to bring diverse members of the community together to work toward positive outcomes.
- Workforce Development.
- Sector-based mentorship provides an opportunity for one-to-one questions and deeper mentorship connections between adults and young people. Providing young people with the confidence and knowledge they need to pursue their area of interest into a career can have positive long-term economic impacts for the region.
