A week after the spring Business, Industry and Technology Career Fair, those who worked behind the scenes can finally take a sigh of relief. Another successful Career Week and career fair are in the books.

In the College of Business, the week leading up to the career fair in the spring is called Career Week. This week is meant to give students an opportunity to prepare for the career fair, develop their soft skills and get exposed to what companies are looking for in their interns and full time hires.

Employers choose what they’re presenting during Career Week, so the content presented is relevant to what the employer is looking for. It also serves as an opportunity to connect faces with names for both counterparts in an environment more personal than the career fair.

To prevent similar presentations, employers go through a screening to make sure they will fit a few different criteria. How established the firm is and if students will enjoy the presentation come into play.

For smaller firms that come for the first time, this is a way for them to gain publicity and market to future employees.

Planning for Career Week began about three months ago and has been non-stop.

Angela Wagner, career coordinator for marketing students, helped with Career Week this year alongside Sarah Van Vark, career coordinator for accounting students, who typically plans everything the Career Week Speaker Series.

There’s a lot of moving parts and communicating, Wagner said. Some days are busier and harder than others.

Meredith Williams, career coordinator for management information systems, serves as the business adviser for the career fair. She advises a committee filled with undergraduate and graduate students who do most of the heavy lifting.

“Students know how to market to students,” Williams said. “We’re always looking for new ideas to implement into the career fair.”

Rachel Miller, sophomore in business management, is the interview day coordinator for the committee. She puts together and distributes employer folders, answers any questions from the employers and makes sure proper information is gathered during interview day — the day after the career fair.

Van Vark has worked on career events for seven years, and once was a career fair adviser. Weather can be one of the biggest difficulties, she said. This makes traveling hard for employers and students.

“We’re in charge of the logistics and getting everyone informed and signed up for the career fair,” Van Vark said. “The day of, we can really just hope everything goes to plan.”

The new LinkedIn photo booth always attracts a big crowd, because it’s not often students get an opportunity to take a free professional photo, Williams said. Smaller employer booths and a career fair feature in the MyState app are other improvements.

Along with smaller booths to compensate for the growth of the career fair, Miller created an electronic forum this year to gather information from companies.

“I think it went really well,” Miller said. “[Previously] we’d have check-in sheets, which made it really hard as staff to understand and stay up-to-date with everyone else.

“This worked for a smaller career fair, but in the fall, when our numbers are doubled in size, we’ll have to find a better system or way to tweak it.”

The fall career fair is less than one month into the fall semester, so Williams recommends constantly updating résumés, doing research in advance, updating CyHire and using the resources at Career Services. 

Each coordinator said the most rewarding part of their job is hearing the success stories from students who have successfully landed a job or connected with the employer.

Through post-interviews and discussions with employers, “employers have high praise of the students here,” Williams said.

Editor’s Note: This story has been corrected to change the title of the week to Career Week and to add additional clarification about the career fair.