Students clean up their resumes and find their business suit every year for the Career Fair, but it takes more than a fancy suit to land a job. Every student finds a different way to prepare, hoping it pays off, literally. We shadow economics senior Laura Giovanni and mechanical engineering junior Kelly Burke as they attend career fairs to see what they have done to help themselves find a job.
When Steven Soave walked out of Career Gallery on Wednesday at Breslin Center, he felt uneasy about the brief meetings he had with a number of businesses and corporations that had set up booths to recruit students.
Soave, a mechanical engineering junior, said the general message from businesses present at the event was to apply online and wait for a response.
He said there weren’t as many students present as he would have thought and there was a noticeable number of empty presentation tables.
“I feel like there probably could have been more employers,” he said. “There’s more students per employer, so (students) are standing in a lot longer lines.”
Soave’s observations reflect a reality in this year’s Career Gallery, which began Wednesday and continues today. About 30 percent fewer businesses and corporations are attending this year’s event than last year, when the event set record numbers for student and business participation, said Kelley Bishop, executive director of MSU’s Career Services.
And MSU is not alone. A preview of a report to be published in the coming months by the National Association of Colleges and Employers detailing the collegiate job market outlook in 2010 revealed that overall hiring for graduates is expected to decrease by about 7 percent. Additionally, businesses surveyed by NACE reported they would attend fewer career fairs and travel less, choosing to place more emphasis on social networking.
Fewer businesses and more students are participating for a number of reasons, Bishop said, including tighter budgets to attend recruiting fairs, the economic recession and an increasingly competitive job market.
“There’s no question it’s a much tougher job market right now than it was even last year,” he said. “It’s certainly much tougher than, say, two and three years ago when things kind of had a peak.”
Bishop said last year’s event attracted a total of 314 businesses and 5,200 students, the largest numbers the event had seen in its almost 10-year history. This year, the number of participating businesses dropped to about 268.
Bishop said the decrease in the number of participating businesses might increase competition between students, and he expected a significant turnout from spring 2009 graduates who still are having trouble finding jobs.
But companies still are looking for potential talent, he said, even if they are not currently hiring. He said students who work to gain exposure to such companies stand a much better chance of gaining employment later.
Many employers that historically have been present at career fairs — including many automakers — noticeably were absent from this year’s lineup. Ford Motor Co. was the only Big Three automaker registered to attend the fair.
“(The gallery) is primarily a catalytic event,” Bishop said. “It gets the ball rolling and it gets students ready … It’ll be a stepping stone.”
Civil engineering senior Erik Zuker said the decrease in participating businesses is a reflection of the economic times, but he still felt confident as he met with potential employers at Wednesday’s event, which focused on the science, engineering and technology fields.
“(I) do know there’s a lot of people laid off out there who are also looking for the same jobs, that have more experience than us,” he said.
Zuker said he prepared for Wednesday’s event by researching companies that would attend the fair, seeing which ones were hiring in his field and submitting online applications. But
the general response he got was that many companies are not currently hiring. Still, he’s optimistic that the job market eventually will improve.
“It sounds like things are turning around,” Zuker said. “They’re gathering up résumés and are going to start sorting through them and as things pick up, we’ll be the ones that they go to.”
MSU alumna Bernice Kachur, a linear program developer and job recruiter for BP Amoco LLC, who worked the company’s booth Wednesday, said she felt good about the number of students turning up for the event.
She said MSU was a good place to hold such an event because of the university’s omnipresent student talent.
“This career fair is well set up … so it’s just a great opportunity,” she said. “I’m glad that BP has finally realized this is a good place to get talent.”
Support student media! Please consider donating to The State News and help fund the future of journalism.
Bishop said he expects the rest of 2009 to be relatively rough for job seekers, but there is reason for hope. Employers are eager to begin hiring fresh talent once the economy strengthens, he said.
“There’s no question that over the next three or four years, I think you will see steady increases in hiring for entry-level talent,” he said. “They have to get that talent. They can’t live without it.”
