How many of you out there are trying to get your life in order, and have a job for immediately after you graduate? Yeah, join the club!
There were lots of well-dressed students packed into the Recreation Center on Thursday, Feb. 22 trying to impress recruiters from various companies in various fields.
Those of you that share my major, Mass Communications, and have dreams of working for big companies like NBC or CBS had a really hard time at the Career Fair because most communications companies like, WNBC and Penguin Publishers, failed to show up.
This was in no way the fault of Career Services, the on-campus student job placement service located behind the Rathskeller.
When I planned on attending the Career Fair, there were at least 8 companies I wanted to give my resume to.
Most of them didn’t show up, namely WNBC. WNBC was recruiting for New Jersey locations, and I really wanted to talk to the representative.
So, what is a graduating senior to do? I dropped my resume off in the WNBC’s box, and also in other boxes for companies that didn’t bother to show.
But is this any different than sending them my resume? Won’t it just get lost in the plethora of other resumes they receive? Isn’t the whole idea of the Career Fair getting out there and meeting representatives? I thought so.
The one thing that took me by surprise at the fair was the woman from Career Blazers that basically stopped my friends and I as we were passing her table, and made us promises that seemed too good to be true.
She asked me where I was from, so I said, “New Jersey.” After I told her that I wanted to stay in New Jersey or New York to earn a living, she insisted that there are perfect jobs for me in the Connecticut area.
When I again said, “No, New Jersey,” she asked me for my resume, wrote down my dorm’s phone number, and told me she’d be in touch about the jobs she had mentioned in Connecticut.
Was this Career Fair set up to only provide jobs to Quinnipiac students that wished to stay in the Connecticut area? I want to work in New York City.
Why weren’t there more representatives from all over the east coast instead of just the Connecticut. Students at Quinnipiac aren’t all from Connecticut, so why should the Career Fair be made mostly of Connecticut-based companies?
This aggravated me and my out-of-state friends. I understand the effort and long hours that went into making the Career Fair a success, but after about 15 minutes of milling around the Recreation Center and scooping out the tables I wanted to visit, I was practically done.
It seems that every person there visited the ESPN table, and maybe some tried for Channel 8 in New Haven, but there weren’t any film companies or newspapers there.
It was only a bunch of hospitals and insurance companies, oh and let’s not forget Macy’s and CVS for those students that want to spend their life getting paid $7.25 an hour with 25% off anything in the store.
So, just like last year, the Career Fair was a disappointment for Mass Communications majors. Career Services should not be blamed for this, but rather all the communications companies that failed to show.
I guess I’ll just have to stick to surfing the web for job descriptions. There are lots of web sites out there that help college graduates find jobs in their fields. And who knows, maybe Graduate School is the answer to the “What to do next?” question.
Oh, and about that Career Blazers woman who kidnapped my resume and insisted she had contacts to find a job for me…well she called on Monday. Guess what? She offered me a job in Connecticut! No thanks!