Marketing junior Michelle Oben, middle, talks with Dow Chemical Co. recruiters at the mock career fair put on by the Women in Business Students’ Association Wednesday evening in the Erikson Hall Kiva.
In a matter of hours after Randee Bierlein shook hands with job recruiters at a campus job fair last October, the then-MSU senior answered the call she was waiting for.
The call was from Microsoft, who eventually hired her to develop software after she graduated in December. Bierlein returned to campus this week for the MSU Career Gallery, where she shook hands on the other side of the Microsoft booth.
“It’s exciting being a part of this from the other side, to come back to school as a big kid who’s graduated, who’s done,” Bierlein said.
Bierlein is one of seven MSU alumni Microsoft has hired in recent years who returned to the two-day event on campus, which ends today.
Kelley Bishop, executive director of Career Services and Placement at MSU, said more than 320 companies lined the Breslin Center concourse and main floor this year. The event reached capacity for the space available in the building by August.
“We do everything we can to squeeze absolutely as many companies as possible,” he said. “Then again, we haven’t gone so far as putting anyone in the restrooms.”
As the first of several job fairs put on by career services through April, the event serves as a starting point for more than 4,000 MSU students’ job hunt, Bishop said.
“This event gets students moving on their job search or exploring what they’d be interested in, even if that field or industry isn’t represented here,” he said.
Bishop said about half of the hundreds of company representatives don a glossy green ribbon and an MSU pin, which event organizers hand out to returning alumni.
Scott Brodie, a 2006 graduate, recruited students for Microsoft on the Breslin Center floor, three booths away from where he sat in the Izzone student section with his friends. His co-worker, 2004 graduate Shailesh Saini, returned to the job fair for the third straight year.
Saini said alumni are more willing to recruit for their company if it means returning to their own school.
“(Alumni) can talk with faculty, gauge which students could be good hires, and might already know what students could be good from having them as classmates,” he said.
Bishop said for any company, alumni will be the most effective recruiters.
“They’re approachable and relatable to the students,” he said.
“They can say that they remember doing this as a student and can help a student learn something from their own experiences.”
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