June 13, 2008
Mariam Kobaladze , Georgia Today

The Education and Job Placement Forum initiated by the Georgian Business Development Center “Caucasia” (GBDC) expands this year to two new locales: Georgia’s “second city” Batumi and Akhaltsikhe, central city of the Samtskhe-Javakheti region.

Batumi will host the forum on June 28, and Akhaltsikhe will take over on July 5. The forum will return to the capital on September 27, 28. Students and unemployed youngsters aged 18-30 can take part in the forum, as well as commercial, governmental, and non-governmental organizations, education institutions, training centers, etc.

The education and job placement forum is made up of three parts. The first is the education forum, which means presentation of programs, courses, trainings and seminars by local and international education institutions targeting youngsters willing to learn and human resource managers of organizations planning to re-train their staff. The second part is the job placement forum with local and foreign companies, state and non-governmental organizations announcing vacancies accompanied by the criteria of their organizations for students and unemployed youngsters. Students registered on the Georgian Business and Development Center Caucasia web-site (www.gbdc.ge/recruiting) are selected to go through interviews with company representatives. In regions students will be able to attend trainings on writing CVs, motivation letters, and making presentations. The usual employment procedure of the forum is handing in CVs to companies and to the human resource department of GBDC, which sorts the received information according to criteria provided by companies and transmits filtered back to them. The third part of the forum is business projects, which enables students and professors to present projects for starting up or expanding businesses for the invited investment groups, donor organizations, and potential partners. They can also present consultative projects whether business plans, marketing research, or grant proposals they had been working during the year.

Companies participating in the forum include TBC Bank, Standard Bank, Bank Constanta, Bank of Georgia, GPI Holding, ProCredit Bank, TaoPrivat Bank, Beeline, PSP, Elkana; Georgian-American University, Independent University “Metekhi,” Akhaltsikhe Center for Adult Education, Batumi Shota Rustaveli State University, Batumi Supreme School of Business, Akhaltsikhe State University, and others.

Financial supporters of the forum are the OSCE Mission to Georgia, and the USAID’s Small and Medium Enterprise Support Program. Sponsors of the forum are TBC Bank and the Georgian-American University. Partners of the forum include the Batumi Shota Rustaveli State University, Akhaltsikhe State University, Iv. Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University, Adjara Chamber of Trade and Commerce, Georgian Chamber of Commerce, Batumi City Hall. Information supporters of the forum are web-site www.jobs.ge, newspaper Georgia Today, and Radio Fortuna+.