Success Story: Korça Job Fair Improves the Labor Market and Results in 22 New Jobs.
Korça’s Job Fair, organized on 14 July 2009, gave businesses the opportunity to promote their activities and select the ideal candidate.
The labor market in Korcë City is very informal. There are no structured methods of announcing vacancies and in the majority of cases vacancy information never reaches the target group. Businesses have not identified appropriate information channels, and applicants have no way of finding vacancies except for word of mouth. Often, it is a matter of who you know rather than the quality of one’s qualifications. As a result the demand and supply do not meet each other properly.

In order to improve the Korce labor market, a Job Fair was conducted inthe City of Korcë on July 14, 2009 with the support of the USAID Local Governance Program in Albania (LGPA) and organized through the collaboration of the Korcë Municipality, the Korcë Chamber of Commerce, Korcë University and the Community Development Center.
Prior to the Job Fair, the organizers contacted local businesses to identify those businesses that had vacancies. At the same time, the organizers advertized the event to job seekers including newly graduated university students and mid-career candidates. To ensure the effectiveness of the Job Fair a training on “How to be Successful in a Job Interview" was conducted in advance for potential applicants. For businesses, a training on “How to Prepare a Job Description” was conducted and information provided on how businesses should organize themselves for the Job Fair.
In addition to giving businesses the opportunity to select qualified candidates, businesses also had the opportunity to promote their activities to Fair visitors. Throughout the day, participating businesses interviewed qualified job applicants.