Three different career fairs are held at N.C. State in February. We, as students, need to go visit these career fairs to find the jobs that suit us the most; we need to find our dream jobs. Most of us try harder every year to get a good job. Employers at the career fair need to understand that a mere representation of their company at the career fair will not work in their favor. University authorities need to come up with “direct action” initiatives for each career fair rather than just working on increasing the number of companies in attendance.
Normally what happens at a career fair is we queue up in front of representatives of our target companies to get a chance to talk to them. These queues can get really long when the company is popular, like Microsoft or Caterpillar at the Engineering Career Fair. After the initial introductions, a student ends up asking questions about various opportunities with the firm. If the student is lucky he or she ends up submitting a resume. I feel most of these resumes are not reviewed and only a few end up getting calls for interviews.
If there is no opportunity to submit a resume, after knowing about the opportunities, we are requested to apply online, making the entire exercise of going to the fair futile. If the entire process was to be done online, there would be no need for a representative to come to the University, and a student should not visit the career fair. It serves no purpose when it comes to employer’s insistence on applying online. I recognize that there is a procedure that needs to be followed for applying for a job, but the employers need to acknowledge the fact that a person who is willing to visit them and talk to them in person would certainly be more interested in working with them than online applicants.
We need to contact University Career Services and other departments involved in planning the fairs and insist on a direct action plan, not just an information and “resume collection” session. We need to make it clear that we want to have an interview or be short listed on the spot. We also need to demand that there be other initiatives by which we can actively track our application process. One option could be University officials acting as a liaisons following up with companies for interested candidates who attended the career fair. We need to demand updates for all the students who submitted their resumes to different companies during career fairs. It could be as simple as employers sending an update on all the resumes collected to University officials one month after the career fair.
We need to make a difference, while we demand a few things we also need to attend sessions with University Career Services before visiting a career fair to make sure that we can be effective candidates. After preparing with University Career Services, we need to show up in high numbers and contribute to N.C. State’s career fairs.
This process without any output or a solid plan of action makes a mockery of a career fair and could be a degrading incident for a student. Imagine distributing over 15 copies of a resume to 15 different companies and not getting even a single interview. Let us insist on a direct action plan for career fairs with the University officials and show up in large numbers to make a difference. We all need to stop beating around the bush and we don’t need to go through a futile exercise of interacting with employers if we’re not even given a realistic chance.
