Mini Tech Fairs and Panel Discussions

CATEP Mini Tech Fairs and Panel Discussions are designed to give high school students, their parents, teachers, and advisors a chance to hear about employment opportunities and requirements directly from industry reps. The four industries that CATEP is focused on are Aerospace, Energy, BioScience, and IT. One of the goals of CATEP is to encourage students interested in IT as a career to investigate the various ways that they can enter the field (i.e. career pathways) and what other skills (such as the Employability – or “Soft” – Skills) would be helpful with their job advancement and longevity.

Topics covered at the Fair/Discussion:

Workforce Development -

• High growth industries (Aerospace/Energy/BioScience/ICT) entry level opportunities for technicians
• Educational requirements (i.e. hard skills, soft skills, disciplinary, etc)
• Advantages of having soft/people skills
• Growth opportunities
• Salary ranges for various fields

Industry reps -

• Technician/technical job types available
  a. Educational requirements (i.e. AAS, Certificate, etc)
  b. Additional training knowledge desired (i.e. disciplinary field such as accounting, marketing, manufacturing, health care, etc)
  c. Job advancement
  d. Long-term outlook
  
• Day-In-The-Life
  a. Work environment (e.g. office/cubicle, field, lab, Ops)
  b. Non-technical activities (e.g. meetings, training, social)
  c. The typical "work day" for an IT employee supporting various company disciplines
  
• Employability issues beyond job-specific technical knowledge
  a. Soft/people skills (e.g. verbal/written comm, crit-thinking/prob-solving, teamwork/collaboration, self-mgmt/motivation, contextual awareness)
  b. Company-related disciplines knowledge/experience (e.g. Bus Ops, manufacturing, testing, metrology, company-specific)
  c. Security Clearance related issues
  d. Ethics related
  
• Travel related (e.g. training, Customer support, conferences, TDY)
  
• Training (e.g. Continuous Improvement methodology, technical, ethics, harassment, time accounting)
  
• Performance appraising (e.g. Company/Department "fit" and technical vs soft/people skills)

CATEP MINI TECH FAIRS ARE OPEN TO ALL METRO DENVER HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS!!
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