Fall Career Fair, Oct. 18

Published: October 10, 2006 | Read Time: 3 minutes

Cameron Brooks, Assistant Director of Career Services at Southern Utah University, predicts this year's Fall Career and Internship Fair on campus Wednesday, October 18, will be the biggest and best yet.

The Career Fair, a chance for off-campus employers to come to campus to tout their full-time, post- graduation professional jobs, internships and summer jobs to students, will bring dozens of employers and hundreds of students together.

It is a diverse group, including companies from Atlas Marketing to Zions Bank. Brooks explains that one goal of the Fair is to have career options for every academic department represented. The Office of Career Services has yearly meetings with each of the departments across campus to make sure the needs of the latter, and the students within, are considered and covered.

"The Career Fair is also about relationship-building and network-building," Brooks states. "One purpose is to help students and prospective employers establish long-term business relationships now." For example, Brooks illustrates, the trends are showing more and more students wanting a career with the FBI. With the SUU Career Fair program, a student can attend every year, learn more each time as well as nurture critical business ties, and make sure he/she is engaging in the kind of studies and activities to properly qualify to one day work for the Bureau.

Another important aspect of the Fall Fair is a focus on internships. Many of the employers represented at the Fair offer internships that provide real career experience, academic credit, and a "try before hired" opportunity. The best way for a student to find out if they would enjoy a certain career is to do an internship. There are internship opportunities in almost every imaginable field.

The "interview-hire game" is certainly a challenge for both employers and employees. There are so many ambiguous factors to deal with, like finding good, skilled employees, or good-paying, rewarding positions. The SUU Career Fair will help both parties fulfill their needs.

More than 70 employers will participate in the Fall 2006 Career Fair in the Ballroom of the Sharwan Smith Student Center from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Nearly 30 percent of those will be represented in person by SUU alumni gainfully-employed at the respective companies. The SUU Career Fair is a direct contributor to the University's high job placement rate; some departments experience a 100 percent placement rates upon graduation.

Historically, more than 80 members of the Class of 2004 found careers with employers through the Career Fair program. Feedback from students and employers alike has also been consistently positive with the average score on Fair evaluations of 4.4 on an ascending scale of 1-5. Employers include Target, Wells Fargo Financial, the FBI, Walgreens, USDA Farm Service Agency, Clark County School District, Deloitte, McGladry & Pullen, NewYork Life, Romney Institute of Public Management, TURN Community Services, Utah State Parks and Recreation, just to name a few.

At the Fair, employers will be actively recruiting SUU students for careers and internships, so students are encouraged to dress professionally and bring multiple copies of their resumes. Students should sign up in advance for interviews, in the Career Services office, as limited time slots fill up quickly.

Prior to the Fair, employers can post their job announcements at SUU Career Services, for free, any time. Jobs are also posted on a local website which gets about 14,000 hits per month from students to alumni. To post any position, employers may call 435.586.5420, fax a job description to 435.586.5422, or see www.suu.edu/ss/career.

Beyond its Fair program, SUU Career Services maintains an electronic resume database for seniors and past graduates by which they run a match with resumes to find the ideal employee for any position. There is also the Alumni Mentoring Network through which current students are partnered with professional working alumni to better prepare the former for prolific careers.

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Contact Information:

435-586-5400
Contact the Office of Marketing Communication