Career Fair – Unfair?

Career planning tells the students that they are available to help all majors on campus, yet when the first Career Fair rolled around last Thursday, all there seemed to be were business companies. As students in the school of the College of Arts and Sciences, we were pretty disappointed.

It seems that the University assumed that as students of the College of Arts and Sciences, we will end up as teachers, so therefore we did not need to make any contacts at the Career Fair.

This being said, there were over 80 companies at the Fair – but more was left to be desired. Yes, we could have gone and talked with the business companies represented and practiced our interviewing skills, but we would have liked some more help. For example, the career fair website listed ten different job categories at the event: Accounting, Computer Science/Engineering, Consulting, Education, Financial Services, Government and Non-profit, Human Resources, Management, Marketing/Communications, Sales and Internships. But what can a biology major get out of that, where are the museums or art galleries for the art history major and how hard would it be to bring the Connecticut Post for those journalism majors?

Within the English Department alone, we have visiting professors constantly coming in from local newspapers and local magazines. These types of connections should make it easy for those planning the Career Fair to help cover more avenues for students. We are sure that other departments have similar set-ups with adjunct professors and visiting ones as well. We suggest Career Planning look into working with these departments – or what about our wealth of alumni?

Moving into the end of our college career, we have worked hard to keep our grades up, be involved on campus and make contacts along the way. The Career Fair would be a wonderful addition to this work but the companies brought into the stuffy room in the RecPlex weren’t much help. Maybe if the Career Fair helped us get jobs, we could be those connections for Career Fairs in the future.