Bilingual professionals sought at upcoming job fair

In a global economic environment with a job market that’s shaky at best, it’s great to know there are still jobs out there for skilled workers. The upcoming seventh annual Bilingual Job Fair organized by the Costa Rican Investment Promotion Agency (CINDE) is a great place to job hunt if you’re bilingual, living in Costa Rica and looking for a career in a specialized trade. 

CINDE’s job fair will be held Feb. 18-20 at the La Aduana Arts and Technology Center in eastern San José’s Barrio La California, and will feature 34 leading multinational companies looking for workers to fill 4,400 job positions, particularly in the services and life sciences sectors. Professionals with second-language skills, including English, Portuguese, French, German, Japanese, Italian and Dutch, are in particularly high demand to fill job openings for engineers, accountants, finance specialists, manufacturing specialists and health product specialists.

Some companies are new to Costa Rica and will be recruiting start-up teams at the fair, including Abbot Vascular, Curtiss Wright, National Instruments and Covidien.

Covidien, a global health care products company, is looking for 100 employees for its new facility in the Coyol Free Trade Zone in Alajuela. Covidien manufactures devices for its Vascular Therapies business.

“The Costa Rica facility provides many benefits as a location for Covidien operations, including the availability of an educated and technical workforce and a growing infrastructure and power source,” said Joe Woody, president of Covidien’s Vascular Therapies unit, in a statement released by CINDE.

Other participating companies include: Abbott Vascular, ACE, Amazon, Amba Research, Amway, APL, Arcus, BA Continuum, BASS, Boston Scientific, Citi, Concentrix, Convergys, Covidien, Curtiss Wright, Dole, Emerson, Experian, Fiserv, Fujitsu, Hellmann, Hologic, HP, IBM, Language Line, MCKinsey, National Instruments, PRG, St. Jude Medical, Startek, Sykes, Teleperformance, Value Access, Western Union and WNS.

Admission is free. Because the job fair is paperless, only digital versions of résumés are accepted and should be on a flash drive, CD or uploaded to the fair’s website at www.empleo.com.