The four-day Northern career development conference opened with a drama presentation by Sir John Franklin high school students.

The performance was written by Grade 12 student Kieron Testart fashioned after the movie Bedazzled.

The presentation was meant to illustrate the difficulty in finding the perfect career.

It also gave the 120 registrants a humorous beginning to the three-day conference, which began Tuesday at the Explorer Hotel.

Titled Career Development ... It's Our Living, Linx is designed to bring career development professionals from across the NWT together.

The workshops allowed them to meet and talk about current trends and different techniques of helping people discover a variety of career paths.

Great Slave MLA Bill Braden, who welcomed participants on behalf of Education, Culture and Employment (ECE) Minister Jake Ootes, called the conference timely.

ECE reports that the employment rate in the NWT is at an all-time high, which makes conferences like these all the more important.

Also significant is the increase in Northern presenters attending the conference. In the beginning a majority of speakers were from the South.

"We're developing the expertise to do it mostly ourselves," said Braden. "We no longer rely on people elsewhere in the country."

Braden added that career trends also dictate that there be means for people to continually develop new skills, something that career development professionals facilitate.

"Young people are probably not going to have a particular career. They are going to move from job to career to vocation and transfer a lot of skills," he said.

With the dynamics of the current job market, Braden said, people need to be flexible and adapt to changing markets.