Stevens students in search of work flock to Spring Career Fair

The Spring Career Fair was held among a wealth of events this Wednesday, March 5th.

Currently unemployed graduating seniors took this event quite seriously as it was one of their final chances to impress numerous potential employers in one fell swoop before graduation. Out of the 119 attending companies, some of the more famous names included Citigroup, Colgate-Palmolive Company, Ericsson, ExxonMobil, the FBI, Johnson & Johnson, Liberty Science Center, Mars Global Services (responsible for M&Ms), MIT Lincoln Labs, Tishman Construction Corporation, and Verizon. High corporate turnout combined with high student attendance made for a tightly packed Schaefer gymanasium. Overall, the event was orderly despite incredibly high turnout, which may be explained by some of the protocols enforced by the event’s host, the Office of Career Development.

Upon entry to Schaefer, students were required to hand representatives a copy of their resume as well as demonstrate their Stevens ID. Ostensibly, such measures were enforced to preserve the advantage of Stevens students (hence, Stevens) in a currently ferocious job market. After passing through this security check, students were greeted with the sight of hundreds of company representatives positioned around long, corporate-paraphernalia-covered tables, shiny stationery, and a sea of bodies covered in suits.

Depending on the popularity of an attending company, a line sometimes snaked in front of said organization’s table. Career Development distributed a booklet to each attending student containing information about each company including a short description of the company, the company name, and the majors they eyed for full-time jobs. Although 3 hours seemed like an abundance of time for students to visit all applicable booths, this may not have been so. Several factors to consider include the sheer number of students competing for jobs with the same employers as well as the varying amount of time spent not only between speaking at different booths, but also waiting for a chance to speak with the employer’s representative. Students also were required to navigate the gym while stepping around their peers, who were noting information concerning recently-visited booths in their portfolios or rearranging them.

Several points of interest concerning job applications follow. Although many companies did collect resumes, a large number of them encouraged online applications. A related point is that a number of companies this year looked for “computer-related majors” and “computer science majors” to fulfil the related jobs. The type of positions and their direct relevance to major-related material varied; positions in development, system administration, as well as database administration abounded, sometimes even within the same company.

A point of interest to newer students is that any student could attend the Fair as long as they met aforementioned specified entry requirements above. A surprising number of companies sought summer intern candidates including Mars Inc., NASDAQ OMX, and ADP. Such points may interest younger students considering attending the Spring Fair next year.