Tech’s annual career fair was held on Sept. 13 and 14 this year at the Campus Recreation Center (CRC). The fair hosted 362 companies, with over 6000 students attending. On the first day, the CRC was filled to its maximum capacity with over 192 companies at the event.
According to Katie Umberson, President of the Career Fair Committee and fifth-year PSY major, the Tech Career Fair is “the largest student-run career fair of its kind in the country.”
The career fair was attended by students ranging from first-year undergraduate students to graduate-level students.
“I always looked at friends who had classes with me one semester and then were representing a company the next and wondered how that worked. Now I am that guy,” said Azhar Mithaiwalla, EE ‘09, who now works as a consultant for Accenture. Companies like Boeing, Rolls Royce, GE, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Apple and many more were present. According to several companies, they experienced heavy interest from job seekers.
“Confidence and how you present your resume is a key. I am looking for well-rounded people who are inquisitive and have a direction in mind,” said a representative for Proctor and Gamble.
Despite the myriad of choices available, many students responded that there is not much diversity in the type of companies attending.
Amrinder Singh Chawla, fourth-year EE major, said that engineering was not something he wanted to do after he completed a minor in management and would have liked to see more firms from other industries in attendance.
Other students found it frustrating that most companies told them to apply online, leaving them to wonder whether there was any point in attending.
“We need to have a presence. If we don’t show up, how are people going to know about us?” said Dale Fink, a representative from the Michelin Group.
Some recent Tech alumni, who themselves attended career fairs at Tech, represented a number of the companies.
“I remember always wondering what the recruiters did and wondering in my mind if they sorted resumes right there and then. Being on this side I realize it’s nothing different from what you’d expect,” said Karan Raturi, BME ’09, who now works as a business consultant for IBM.
According to Umberson, the organizers of this year’s career fair made a concerted effort to better lay out the booths in order to improve the experiences for both students and employers. The goal was to allow more room for students to congregate and talk with potential employers. The changes resulted in just that.
The career fair this year also offered a more comprehensive and easy-to-use online system for companies to register, making it more likely that more companies would attend.