W MI students try on different jobs at MiCareerQuest

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — Thousands of West Michigan students got an opportunity to explore a variety of careers through MiCareerQuest Wednesday afternoon.

“I think it’s like a privilege. Not everybody gets to go to this so I feel very honored to come,” said Gabe Gardner, a junior at Spring Lake High School.

Gardner’s teacher thought the career fair, held at DeVos Place in Grand Rapids, would be a great opportunity for business students.

“It’s a really interactive, immersive experience and just to see kids smile and get involved and talk about these careers, it’s really neat to see,” said Kelli Heavilin, a teacher at Spring Lake High School.

“I really like how the kids keep coming back going, “Oh my gosh, I got to do this, or I got to do this, or I made this, and I didn’t know this was a job,” so it’s been, for ones that want to be YouTubers this is great,” said Stacey Peterson, who also teaches at Spring Lake High School.

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West Michigan Works! has been putting on MiCareerQuest since 2015.

“The goal of it is for them to figure out what do they want to do in their careers and what does a career pathway look like?” said Chad Patton, director of development and innovation for West Michigan Works!

The workforce development agency partners with five different industries including agribusiness, manufacturing, construction, information technology and healthcare to provide hands-on experiences for 8th through 12th graders.

“We have 300 jobs here on display that they can check out and learn if this is something that they might want to do in their futures,” Patton said. “We have a number of students who have come in here and learned that they have found or they were introduced to a career that they ultimately ended up going into.”

It also helps narrow down the options.

“If we have a student who has never seen a needle go into even a fake arm before, right? They might find out that they don’t want to go into healthcare for that reason. So, we also are interested in helping students learn, you know, maybe there are some jobs that might not be right for them, but look at all these other jobs.”

With more than 100 schools and businesses involved, Patton said the event takes a lot of collaboration.

“Partnership is huge with our intermediate school districts and making sure that all of the teachers know what the plan is,” he explained. “We have a great project manager named Maggie Ryan who is coordinating with everyone, and we have 150 volunteers here today, West Michigan Works! staff, and also a lot of our partners are here, just having their jobs and making sure they’re coordinating the moving of students.”

Patton said they plan to continue putting on the event every year.

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