Students meet their match at job fairs

General and specialized career fairs bring hundreds of recruiters to the UD campus on a regular basis, giving a boost to students seeking post-graduate employment as well as summer positions and internships.

The 2008 Spring Career Fair in April set attendance records, as almost 1,000 job-seekers and 185 employers turned out to make connections designed to benefit both groups.

“It was a very successful event,” says Jill Gugino, program coordinator for the University’s Bank of America Career Services Center. “We received a lot of great feedback from employers, and several told us that the students they spoke to…were incredibly well-prepared and very professionally dressed. They were highly impressed with UD students compared to other schools.”

Examples of satisfied recruiters were Trena Williams and Larry Merchant of Allen Family Foods, who amassed a stack of résumés on their table. Merchant, who visits six college and university job fairs a year, says UD’s is one of the best—well-organized, he says, with students who are “prepared, well-groomed and good communicators.”

Also in April, the University’s 30th annual teacher job fairs once again brought hundreds of students, alumni and other job-seekers together with recruiters from school districts throughout Delaware and from across the nation. The Bank of America Career Services Center and the University Council on Teacher Education sponsor the two-day event each year.

The first day of the event is Teach in Delaware Day, which allows recruiters from Delaware schools to meet and interview UD students before representatives from other states arrive. Held April 15 this year, Teach in Delaware Day drew 81 recruiters representing 28 Delaware public school districts and charter schools and 528 students and alumni, according to Cindy Holland, assistant director of the career services center.

Project Search, held the next day, brought 642 job-seekers and 307 recruiters representing 132 school districts in nine states, the District of Columbia, Korea and the Peace Corps to campus, Holland says.

The Bank of America Career Services Center sponsors numerous career fairs each academic year. Some that are scheduled in the fall focus on law school, engineering and information management, health sciences and fashion and apparel studies.
The center also holds workshops on such career-related subjects as interview preparation, job search strategies and salary negotiations.

For more information about the center and its job fairs and other programs, visit [www.udel.edu/CSC/] or call (302) 831-2391.