THIS year's Gazette Jobs, Careers and Recruitment Exhibition was bigger and better than ever.

More than 700 people attended the exhibition, which this year, due to past demand, was held in two rooms in Colchester's Town Hall - the Grand Jury Room and Moot Hall.

As usual, the exhibition had everything under one roof for those seeking advice on full, part-time and further education courses, career advice. For those looking for a job, there was a number of recruitment agencies on hand.

Businesses at the fair included sponsors of the event - Thera Group, TBG Learning, BCT Consortium, ENS Recruitment, npower, Family Mosaic, Care UK, Remploy, Avon, Job Centre Plus, Bairstow Eves, Secure Health, Essex Social Care Professionals and Careforce.

For those looking to be part of a team - the Army and Essex Police were on hand to discuss the numerous positions available.

CVquest - a recruitment service from the Gazette - was also on hand offering people the chance to add their details to the CVquest site.

Ginette May, recruitment manager for Newsquest, said: "Both halls have been very successful and exhibitors are very pleased. We had an extremely good quantity and quality of candidates.

"CVquest in particular did extremely well today. At least 30 CVs will be uploaded onto the website so companies can look for potential employees."

Sponsor of the event, the Thera Group, was also extremely pleased with the response it had at the exhibition.

Exhibitor, Steve Raw, of Thera Group, said: "It's been excellent, we've had people complete application forms as they look through information. We have a number of people that we will be able to process applications for."

This is the first Gazette Jobs, Careers and Recruitment Exhibition the Thera Group has attended, but it did attend the Chelmsford Weekly News - the Gazette's sister paper - Jobs, Careers and Training Exhibition in January.

Mr Raw added: "We attended one jobs, careers and recruitment exhibition in Chelmsford, but this is the first one in Colchester. Chelmsford was a success but this is a greater success."

Thank you to all those who attended the Jobs, Careers and Training Exhibition, and a special thank you to sponsors Thera Group.

The next Gazette Jobs, Careers and Training Exhibition, will be held later this year on September 11. Anyone wishing to exhibit contact the Gazette's recruitment team on 01268 533246.