Collegiate Times

Two career fairs are quickly approaching: Connection Co-op and Internship Fair and Directions Career Fair.
Carolyn Rader, director of the cooperative education and internship program for Virginia Tech Career Services, planned the entire Connection fair from its inception. She has been working with Career Services since 2007 and believes that the primary goal is to help students gain working experience before they graduate.
“The purpose of the career fair is to make students aware of companies that are hiring and what their needs are,” Rader said. “And it’s a venue for students to go and network with companies to find employment or find internships or gain experience.”
Debbie Wilson, College of Science adviser and Career Services coordinator, has been planning career fairs at Tech for the past 10 years. She now advises the new student group “Career Spectrum Council,” which is responsible for coordinating all aspects of Directions and another the Fall Focus career fair held in the fall. She said students will gain more than finding employment at a career fair.
“I hope that they will gain some confidence in their ability to talk to people they don’t know and build their networking opportunities,” Wilson said.
Four colleges are involved with Directions: Agriculture and Life Sciences, the College of Natural Resources, Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, and the College of Business.
College students are now expected to have experience in their field before they graduate from a university. Students can no longer wait until after they finish college to find a job; they must start filling their resumes up with related job experience while still in school in order to find something after graduation.
“The career fairs we offer give them to opportunity to meet with companies in order to get that experience,” Rader said. “And, since it’s an essential part of their whole experience while they’re there. It makes them more marketable and it opens them up to various vendors they might not have known existed. It starts to prepare them early for the job search, which comes very quickly when they graduate.”
Still, there are advantages students can gain from attending a career fair even if they’re not looking for a job.
“Attend a career fair to find out who’s hiring, and what types of positions they are trying to fill,” Wilson said. “Even if they’re not looking for a full-time position now, they can get an idea of the positions available, so when they do start looking they know what’s out there.”
Bridgette Kim, a senior political science and communication double major, attended the Career Services Internship and Co-op Fair last February. She initially did not visit the fair with the goal of finding a job, but ended up being impressed and received a co-op with a company called SedBid. It also offered her a full-time position for her after she graduates.
“I didn’t go thinking that I would even be interested in anything. I just went to practice my interviewing skills,” Kim said. “But there were a whole variety of different places, different booths and different companies that were there. I thought it was really informational and really well setup for sophomores and juniors who wanted internships and co-ops.”
Career fairs are not only helpful for just students, but are also beneficial to an employer, which explains their willingness to pay to attend. To attend Connection, companies pay $450. For Directions, employers pay anywhere from $375 to $400 depending on the size of the booth they
want.
“The employers are coming to campus to get their name on campus to make students aware that they are there and what opportunities they have to offer to students,” Rader said. “The students are there to find employment and to be able to learn to network and find the resources for them to use to find employment and experiences.”
In general, employers attend career fairs for various reasons.
“A lot of times employers can’t make offers right while they’re at the fair, and some don’t even stay for interviews,” Rader said. “So, they come to talk to students and possibly collect resumes. Some stay on campus to interview, and some have been known to make decisions right on the spot.”
Although Kim ended up receiving a co-op with a company that attended the fair, she had to go through a process.
“The way they set it up was when you initially go there, you talk with whichever representative from whichever company, and it’s kind of a meet and greet,” she said. “Then, based on your resumes and their initial impression of you, they ask you back for an interview.”
Students must come prepared to make the most out of their experience at a career fair. They must be ready to interact with the employers of their choice.
“They need to research the employer,” Rader said. “That’s one of the primary things that they need to do to see how they fit with employers that are coming to campus, ones that they have the qualifications and the skills that the employer wants. Researching that company, figuring out where you fit and your ability to tell the employer how you fit is how to get the most out of it.”
Ashley Devereux, a senior business management major, attended the Business Horizons Fair in fall 2009 and quickly learned that
preparation is key.
“It was kind of overwhelming,” Devereux said. “I didn’t really know what to expect. I probably wasn’t as prepared as I should have been. It’s kind of intimidating. You walk up and they ask you a lot of questions and what you expect from them.”
Career Services provides career fair prep events to help students get ready for Connection and other career fairs. One prep program is called Resumania, where employers and career advisers give students walk-in resume critiques.
Rader believes that students need to have quality resumes ready to hand out at a career fair.
“That’s one of the primary things because it represents them as a student,” Rader said, “and if they don’t know how to represent themselves well on a resume, then a lot of times they won’t have the opportunity to sell themselves in person because their resumes will get them an interview.”
Overall, if prepared, students can gain not only a job opportunity, but also a learning experience from attending a career fair.
“I think that career fairs can be very, very beneficial for any student,“ Wilson said, “and I wish that more students would take advantage of them. For the number of students that are graduating or looking for internships and co-ops, there are a very small percentage of them that come to the career fairs.”