Up­com­ing Ca­reer Fair Op­por­tu­nity

MISHAWAKA—Why do peo­ple at­tend col­lege? For most the an­swer to this ques­tion is so they can pur­sue their dreams and hope­fully, one day, land a job in their field of in­ter­est. The up­com­ing Ca­reer Fair pro­vides the per­fect plat­form to get con­nected and take the nec­es­sary steps to ob­tain a job, while also pro­vid­ing a good way to prac­tice skills one must have in or­der to suc­ceed in the work world. 

The Ca­reer Fair, put on by Ca­reer and De­vel­op­ment Of­fice, will be tak­ing place on Wednes­day, March 13 at 10:00 A.M. and con­tinue un­til 1:00 P.M. It will be held in the Wiekamp Ath­letic Cen­ter. This event is a big deal be­cause so many stu­dents ben­e­fit greatly from it.  

Many months go into the or­ga­niz­ing and plan­ning of the event. Every year it is the goal to im­prove the Ca­reer Fair in some way, and the Ca­reer De­vel­op­ment Of­fice works very closely with em­ploy­ers to fig­ure out what will work best for every­one. Em­ploy­ers who have at­tended past Ca­reer Fairs put on by Bethel, re­ally ap­pre­ci­ate the hos­pi­tal­ity shown to them dur­ing their visit, and there have been many great re­la­tion­ships formed be­cause it. Also, Bethel Alumni will of­ten par­tic­i­pate by bring­ing busi­nesses they are in­volved in with them to the Ca­reer Fair.    

The Ca­reer Fair is open to all stu­dents, and many can ben­e­fit from at­tend­ing. There will be around one hun­dred em­ploy­ers pre­sent, which pro­vides many op­por­tu­ni­ties for stu­dents to se­cure pos­si­ble in­tern­ships, fu­ture jobs, or any open­ings the em­ploy­ers have in mind. It also pro­vides a unique op­por­tu­nity to prac­tice proper eti­quette when it comes to ap­ply­ing for jobs.  

There are al­ready many se­niors grad­u­at­ing this year who have fu­ture jobs lined up as a re­sult of par­tic­i­pat­ing in the an­nual Ca­reer Fair in past years. Some ma­jors and pro­fes­sors re­quire stu­dents (mainly ju­niors and se­niors) to at­tend the event, but that does­n’t mean that fresh­men and sopho­mores are not wel­come also. In fact, they are en­cour­aged to go as well, if for noth­ing else then the ex­pe­ri­ence of it, and pos­si­bly get­ting a jump-start on their ca­reers.  

There are many ways a stu­dent can pre­pare for the Ca­reer Fair to raise the chance of suc­cess. One of these would be work­ing on a re­sume. If you need help prepar­ing a re­sume, you can go to the tu­tor­ing web­site and click on re­sume coach­ing and set up a meet­ing to go over the re­sume and an­swer any ques­tions that come up. If a stu­dent has never cre­ated a re­sume be­fore, you can go to the Ca­reer De­vel­op­ment web­page and there is a new packet up that ex­plains how to cre­ate a re­sume. Af­ter look­ing at the packet and cre­at­ing a re­sume, it would also be a good idea to have it checked for er­rors. An­other way of prepa­ra­tion, would be to go one the Ca­reer Fair page and look up any em­ploy­ers of in­ter­est to have an idea of who to try to ap­proach and talk to at the fair. It would also be a great idea to come up with an “el­e­va­tor pitch,” mean­ing a short way to in­tro­duce one­self to em­ploy­ers. One may also pre­pare by work­ing on “soft skills,” which would be things such as hand­shakes, elim­i­nat­ing ner­vous habits, and be­ing able to carry on pro­fes­sional con­ver­sa­tions. The last piece of ad­vice would be to dress up. This is con­sid­ered an im­por­tant event, so if stu­dents show up in ca­sual at­tire, it will most likely be frowned upon.

If stu­dents par­tic­i­pate, and prop­erly pre­pare for the Ca­reer Fair the hope is many will be able to walk away with pos­si­ble next steps af­ter  grad­u­a­tion.