As employment anxieties swirl with layoffs hitting technology companies, hundreds of high school seniors gathered in East Tampa this week and met with companies including Publix, TECO, BayCare and more. Some walked away with jobs.<\/p>\n
At the Future Career Academy, students participated in the culmination of a year-long career readiness program and sat in sessions about life skills and how to up their pay once they\u2019re in a job. They asked employers what it was like to work for their companies.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of times kids don\u2019t know what\u2019s out there and available,\u201d said Stephanie Smith, a vice president of TECO. \u201cWhat this program does is bring real life immediate opportunities. Not everyone\u2019s going to go to a four-year university, maybe even not even a two-year. Maybe they go to a trade school. Some may go straight to work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Companies, Smith said, have a role to play, in helping young people find their next steps.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur country depends on showing up for them, making sure they know what\u2019s possible,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Maliyah Ballard, an 18-year-old who graduated from Tampa Bay Tech High School last year, spoke to this year\u2019s students about how the program helped her. She played golf and softball until her senior year, when she sustained a major arm injury while playing softball.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m like, well, I\u2019m not playing softball so I don\u2019t know where I\u2019m going or what I\u2019m going to do,\u201d<\/p>\n
Through the program, she started looking into what she could do. She\u2019s now finished a five-month training program and is a licensed emergency medical technician and plans to seek further education to become a paramedic.<\/p>\n
Marcus Hames, an Armwood High School senior, asked representatives from the sheriff\u2019s office if working there was like the show \u201cThe Rookie.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mahmoud Almsaaid, also a senior at Armwood High School, said he hopes to work in cybersecurity and enjoyed getting to ask employers questions.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes it\u2019s hard to make a decision,\u201d he said. \u201cI feel like you\u2019re worried if you take a wrong decision, and you don\u2019t know if it\u2019s a right decision or wrong decision.\u201d<\/p>\n
Courtney Shackelford, a workforce program coordinator at Armwood, said giving high school students the confidence to enter the workforce is a big part of finding employment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey don\u2019t have to think. \u2018Oh, it\u2019s just a drive thru at a fast food (restaurant),\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s some good jobs out there that they can walk into with a high school diploma. \u201c<\/p>\n
Future Career Academy will hold five other hiring events across the county this month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As employment anxieties swirl with layoffs hitting technology companies, hundreds of high school seniors gathered in East Tampa…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":220611,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[100027,100026,33193,800,93181,135,137,136,23896],"class_list":["post-220610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-armwood-high-school","tag-career-academy","tag-hillsborough-county-public-schools","tag-seniors","tag-stephanie-smith","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-technology-companies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/220611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}