USU Career Fait largest in state
From Abercrombie to Xactware, 170 employers gathered in the Taggart Student Center on Wednesday to participate in the state’s largest career fair.
Career Services has been hosting the Utah State University Career Fair for 15 years, Melissa Scheaffer, associate director of Career Services, said. USU was the first school in the state to put on a career fair after it started as a trend among universities in the 90s. In the beginning, the Career Fair was only made up of about 75 employers, Scheaffer said, and it has been growing ever since.
Emily Willis, a sophomore majoring in accounting and management, attended the career fair in search of internships for next year.
“It’s huge,” Willis said. “I knew it was going to be huge, but not this huge.”
Willis said she wanted to come and see what kind of businesses are here so next year she will be prepared for networking future employers.
Randy Jensen, assistant director of Career Services, said networking is the biggest goal of the Career Fair. Jensen said 80 percent of students say they found their first job through networking and having contact information from prospective employers
An added bonus of the event is an opportunity of a one-on-one interview, he said.
Thirty-two of the businesses that attended the fair stayed an extra day to conduct interviews with students on Thursday.
Jensen said Career Services focuses on providing the resources and services students need to get the jobs they want, and a Career Fair is the best way to do that for the entire student body.
Jared True, a sophomore in broadcast journalism, said he liked the Career Fair because there were so many people ready to talk to and answer questions.
“It’s very convenient to be right on campus and they have a lot to offer,” True said.
Jensen has been with Career Services for three years and has seen the Career Fair grow bigger every year. The increase could be due to the economy, he said. There are more jobs out there so more employers are looking. However, the turnout is due in part to the students.
“[The employers] know the quality of the students here,” Jensen said.
This was the first year Steve Eckerman, assistant store manager of Hastings, participated in the USU Career Fair. Eckerman said he had been to another career fair at a nearby college recently and they didn’t have nearly as many companies participate as he saw at USU.
Eckerman said they were looking for management positions and offering an internship for students to learn how to run a retail store. Eckerman said two of their current managers were recruited at career fairs and one of those was from USU.
“It can be fruitful,” Eckerman said. “We will most likely return again next year.”
The preparation for the Career Fair is a year round job. The staff consists of 10 full-time employees, and between eight to 10 student employees who are constantly involved with making the fair possible.
Simply put, “We are busy,” Jensen said.
Mailings and recruitment material are sent out in the summer to between 2,500 and 3,000 employers. An organized timeline is set up in the middle of Fall semester, and from the time the staff gets back from Winter Break they have a weekly timeline of things to do in preparation.
“It’s kind of like a countdown,” Jensen said, “so it isn’t a major stress at the end.”
Dana Backlund, human resources generalist for Portneuf Medical Center, said this was also her first time participating in the Career Fair.
“This is the most organized one I’ve seen,” Backlund said.
Buckland said she drove an hour and a half from Idaho to recruit students for a variety of positions available at the Portneuf Medical Center and to “get their name out there.”
Mary Austin, a sophomore majoring in liberal arts and social science, said she walked through the Career Fair between classes looking for opportunities to gain a career in health services and to see if anything “caught her eye.”
She said was impressed by the Career Fair as a whole, and thought Career Services did a good job putting the event together.
Jensen said although it was a “tough year weather wise,” a few employers hit the fog on the way up, he said he was pleased with the outcome of the Career Fair and the wonderful turnout of employers and students.
-etippetts@cc.usu.edu
Convergys representatives talk with students at Wednesday´s Career Fair, which was held on the second floor of the TSC. (Photo by Jamie Crane)