Standing in the midst of suits and pencil skirts, the sound of rustling résumés and corporate conversation filled the Events Center at the Job and Internship Fair on Thursday.
According to Denise Lorenzetti, associate director of employee and alumni outreach at the Fleishman Center for Career and Professional Development, over 2,500 students typically attend the fair in the fall semester, which helps attract employers to the event.
“Employers see a large amount of students in a relatively short period, which is really helpful for them to determine students that would be a good fit for their organization and have the qualifications they are looking for,” Lorenzetti said.
The fair, sponsored by the Fleishman Center, attracted 133 employers this year.
According to Francis Borrego, associate director of marketing, technology, and assessment at the Fleishman Center, roughly 40 percent of all companies attending the event were recruiting students of all majors for both part-time and full-time employment and internship positions.
“We’ve seen an increase in the trend where employers are looking to hire overall good students and are focusing less on majors,” Borrego said. “The Fleishman Center has really been focusing on exposing employers to the talent across the entire University for the last several years.”
David Kahan, a senior manager at Ernst & Young, echoed Borrego’s statement, and said his company was looking for students that were a good fit, regardless of school or major.
“We are looking to understand what their career vision is; we’re looking to share our stories with them,” Kahan said. “I think this year we’ve seen a lot of different schools come out to talk to us, with more Watson and Harpur students than before.”
Matthew Martini, a junior majoring in accounting, said he’d been to the job fair previously, and was pleased with the variety of opportunities.
“There’s definitely a range and a lot of job options for me here,” Martini said. “They have a lot of medium and large companies that I could potentially work for.”
Nevertheless, some students said they left the job fair feeling dissatisfied. Skyler Groglio, a senior majoring in English, said she was looking for a full-time job, but was having trouble finding employers offering jobs geared toward her major.
“While I’m waiting in line, I look through the list for the next one,” Groglio said. “A lot of them are geared towards SOM. The ones geared towards English have long lines because there are so little of them.”
For those who didn’t attend the fair, the Fleishman Center has other resources to link students with prospective employers, including Handshake — formerly HireBing — and alumni talks. According to Borrego, the number of internships and job postings available to students is expected to double in the upcoming year.
“The job fair is not the end-all, be-all,” Borrego said. “Last year there were over 2,000 internships and 5,000 job postings on HireBing.”
Despite the shift to Handshake and influx of job postings, Cortney Hafkin, a senior majoring in English, said she preferred the direct interaction with employers while searching for jobs and internships.
“I am trying to get my name out there and test the waters,” Hafkin said. “This is all about networking, and meeting one person can make all the difference.”
Kelly Coyne and Ilana Desmond contributed reporting to this story.