Grove City College students are a notoriously driven bunch. It feels like many of us are thinking about what we will be doing post-graduation or over the summer more than anything else. Last semester saw many summer jobs and internships canceled because of the virus, and we have been hesitant to get our hopes up for more opportunities. Many of us were really disappointed and nervous to hear that the Career Fair was not going to be held in person like it usually is. Yet, the online Career Fair put on by the Career Services Office was a complete success, and I suspect there will be lots of jobs and internship positions for this upcoming summer because of it. So, here is some insight as to how it went:
The entire event was hosted through Handshake, which is a job recruitment application for college students. Weeks in advance, the Career Services Office worked hard to advertise the event to make sure the entire student body knew about the Career Fair. This was a big help to people like myself who do not typically stop to read all the flyers around campus. Student staff wore Career Fair t-shirts, banners were up around campus, and chapel advertised months in advance. It was impossible miss the career fair.
A few days before the event, the CSO put catalogues in our mailboxes, which listed out every company that would attend the virtual fair. I found this to be very helpful and much more effective than past Career Fairs where I would typically wander around until I stumbled upon a company that interested me. With the catalogs in the mail, I could easily see which companies might be of interest to me and sign up for interviews. Amanda Meyers, an Entrepreneurship major commented about past years, “Most booths are computer science and chemical engineer booths. There are only a couple booths suited for my major.” The new system of sorting out companies ahead of time made connecting with businesses a breeze in comparison to previous years. The use of Handshake made it easy for companies to connect with students as well. Many students had companies reach out and request to interview with them at the fair before the fair had begun.
Each session was 30 minutes long, which gave businesses adequate time to present to students what their company was all about. The longer sessions allotted time for students to properly connect with businesses and ask questions as well. Overall, I felt that connecting with companies was much easier through the services offered through the online Career Fair than it was at past in-person fairs. Next year might be in person, or it might be online, but the CSO’s hard work from the past year is going to open new doors even for next year’s Fair.
