(ABC 6 News) – Mayo Clinic celebrated the 20th anniversary of its High School Career Exploration Festival, providing students the opportunity to check out a wide variety of jobs and careers in the healthcare industry.

About 1500 students attended the festival held at the Mayo Civic Center, all from schools in Rochester and the surrounding area.

Many of the students attending were learning about these opportunities for the first time, but some have already been on track to enter the healthcare field.

Amaya James is a sophomore at John Marshall High School in Rochester, and one of a group of students taking part in P-TECH, a program held at Rochester Public Schools to prepare them for careers in either nursing or IT.

“I know I want to go into nursing, I want to help people,” James said. “But nursing is such a broad… like so much to do. I wanted to see all the opportunities and all the careers that I could possibly enter.”

Students like James had the chance to interact directly with Mayo staff, get hands-on experience in a variety of fields, and hear from experts in those fields on what pathways they should follow to find success in healthcare.

“There are so many different healthcare professions our there, and I think unless you get an opportunity to attend an event like this you’re just not given that experience to understand it,” said Jennifer Storlie, operations manager for Mayo Clinic’s In-Patient Phlebotomy Lab Services.

Mayo Clinic is also holding a hiring event Thursday, October 10 from 8:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M.

According to Mayo, more than 1,000 people have already registered for the event; a huge increase from last year’s roughly 600.

However, the event is open to more than just those who RSVP’ed. Anyone is able to walk in to the Mayo Civic Center during the hiring event and register on site.