The Small Business Career Fair, scheduled to be held Wednesday in the Great Hall of the Memorial Union, has been canceled.

The event was conceived as a partnership between ISU’s Liberal Arts and Sciences Career Service office and the Chamber of Commerce, and was intended to give recruiting opportunities to companies with less than 100 employees.

But low business interest forced cancellation, said Megan Backman, program manager with the Ames Chamber of Commerce.

“We just didn’t have enough organizations register to warrant paying for the room,” said Kim Caponi, assistant director of LAS Career Services. “We came to a deadline when we either had to pay for the room or cancel the room.”

Caponi said they were hoping for approximately 20 organizations to sign up. Twelve had registered when the event was canceled.

Though this year’s career fair didn’t get off the ground, the event will likely return next year.

The Small Business Career Fair idea was created in order to cater to the needs of small companies, many of which don’t have the ability or resources to attend larger career fairs.

“We do host the larger career fair events and they’re very successful,” Caponi said. “Some of the smaller organizations, they typically don’t attend that type of event.”

Whether it’s the registration cost at the larger events, or the competitive requirement of having a flashy display, smaller companies recruit in alternative ways.

Caponi said that next year’s fair will benefit from what was learned through the work done this year, including how to best recruit small companies to take part in the event. She said that she spoke with several organizations not only about the event being organized, but also helped them to think about whether or not they could offer an internship, or implement an internship program.

“We did generate a lot of interest, we did get a lot of calls,” Caponi said. “We’re planning to try it again next spring. Eventually, we think it will be very successful.”