RIYADH: Saudi Arabia’s biggest jobs fair for women on Tuesday opened in Riyadh offering thousands of career opportunities in the Kingdom’s booming labor market. The three-day “A Step Ahead Career Fair,” organized by Saudi-based Glowork in cooperation with the Ministry of Labor and Social Development, will include 90 leading local and international companies showcasing employment options in a wide range of sectors. In his welcoming speech Khalid Al-Saleh, managing director and founding partner at Glowork, said he hoped to see increasing numbers of women taking up the chance to work, and pointed to initiatives already in progress aimed at raising female participation in the Saudi jobs market from 22 percent to 30 percent by 2030. Al-Saleh told Arab News: “We started it (the recruitment fair) seven years ago and organize it annually under the patronage of the Labor Ministry. It is a national-level event designed to empower Saudi women with all educational backgrounds and experiences. “We invite the top 200 students selected from universities around the Kingdom to listen to experts from big organizations and learn from them to help make careers for themselves. “We have had more than 190,000 women participating in events over the past six years, over 10,000 who got trained and attended free workshops, and around 36,000 women who have been hired through Glowork, many of them through this event,” added Al-Saleh. He said graduates participating in the fair were also offered jobs by various companies, and many had gone on to reach senior management positions. The career fair and recruitment conference include workshops designed to develop personal and soft skills for jobseekers.