Dear Editors, We are writing in response to the “Best and the Rest of the Past Week,” in the Feb.12 issue of The Chronicle regarding the University career fair. This year’s fair was the best attended by both students and employers in Quinnipiac’s history. We have heard positive feedback from students in all four Quinnipiac colleges about their interactions with employers and upcoming interviews.

However, we do understand the concerns of liberal arts and communications students and we wanted to address them here. One of the main things to keep in mind with not only career fairs, but with a job search in general is managing expectations. For this reason, we very publicly made available the list of companies attending, as well as the majors they were seeking to fill their positions. All students should have entered the career fair with an idea of what to expect and the types of employers/industries who would and would not be there.

Nevertheless, it is important to note that between 40 and 50 percent of the employers present indicated that they were seeking either exclusively or inclusively communications and/or liberal arts majors. Moreover, different industries have varying hiring procedures.

While businesses often have large recruiting departments and factor events such as career fairs into their schedule for finding new hires, this is less common in industries such as media, including broadcasting, publishing, public relations, advertising, sports and production. In these competitive fields, organizations often don’t have extra staff to attend career fairs and tend to hire through networking, posting positions on their own sites and through specialized events.

Here at the School of Communications, we make every effort to connect students with opportunities including sponsoring a bus to a sports career fair in Boston, organizing employer breakfasts and launching a mentor program next month to connect students with alumni in their chosen professional specialties.

In the College of Liberal Arts, we assist students in a large variety of career trajectories, including education, government, law, social service, social work, business, publishing and law enforcement just to name a few.

At present, we are working on providing personalized attention to students, especially seniors, and we look forward to student input regarding how we can best assist students in their career exploration and development.

For any students who feels concerned about their job search, we encourage you to come in and meet with us so we can provide you with individual support and attention and help you develop a personalized job or internship search plan. Best regards,

-Jennifer Burns, Assistant Dean of Career Services, School of Communications

-Annalisa Zinn, Assistant Dean of Career Services, College of Liberal Arts