Sustainability is a hot area in public discourse, but that may not translate to the career fairs.

Mike Gaul, director of Career Services for the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, said a lot of companies that focus on sustainability and ethanol cropped up very quickly over the past couple of years.

Because of this, they may not always have a lot of structure to their human resources departments or recruiting efforts.

“Sometimes, it comes down to being in the right place at the right time,” Gaul said.

He advised that students not get frustrated if a person or company they would like to network with is not attending the career fairs.

Gaul said there are jobs out there, even if they’re not being advertised. Students may just have to make an effort to get in touch with the company.

In contrast, Gaul said that popular areas that will be recruiting at the career fair are commodity training and merchandising, with at least 10 companies attending; food, especially quality control, sales and research and development; and agronomy, especially seed companies and co-ops.