Letter to the editor: Students fail to take advantage of career fair

To the seniors, juniors and others at USD,

It is wonderful to see that the economy has turned around and that hardly any of USD’s upcoming graduates need to find a job or internship.

That is the conclusion I am drawing after the Career Fair that was held  April 3 in the Muenster University Center Ballroom. Over 40 employers were in attendance and less than 100 students showed up.

Last October, we had an employer and graduate school fair with 80 companies and graduate schools where slightly more students showed up, about 200.

Companies come to these events because they are interested in hiring USD graduates.

An example: On Thursday the Mattress Firm was at the Career Fair. They are a huge nationwide company. The owner is a USD graduate.  They came ready to hire.  They were hiring manager trainees and trying to get an internship program started. The owner was here and he brought three other store managers with him. They do not care what major a student has as long as they are motivated and ready to work.  Mostly they stood around and talked to each other and other recruiters and asked us where all the students were.

There were 40 other companies in the ballroom asking the same question.

How many upcoming graduates do we have on this campus? 1,200? How many students could use an internship? At least hundreds. There could easily have been a 1,000 plus students attending either of these fairs.

These events were well advertised. Posters were posted, emails were sent. Departments and faculty were alerted. A whole week of activities featuring resume workshops, job search strategies, etc. preceded the fair last week. Why didn’t more students turn out?

The Academic and Career Planning Center tries to connect students with jobs and internships, but students and upcoming graduates need to meet us at least half way. You need to put in time and effort, and that means more than just surfing the net looking for openings and applying online. Take advantage of the events that are offered and come out to meet possible employers and learn about companies and organizations that are out there. You may be pleasantly surprised by what spending a little face time with a recruiter could do for your career.

Sincerely disappointed,

Clarence Pederson, adviser

Academic and Career Planning Center