For David DiFalco, becoming the general manager of the Marriott Renaissance New York Midtown Hotel fulfilled a dream he shared with many of his fellow hospitality management students at the University of Delaware. Today, he attributes his success in attaining that position to the annual Hospitality Career Fair at UD and the contacts he made there.

“I had a pretty fantastic experience with the career fair back when I was at Delaware,” DiFalco said.

Beginning in his freshman year, DiFalco attended the hospitality career fair every year. He has now attended a total of 14 times: four as a student, eight as a recruiter for Marriott, and two as a recruiter for White Lodging (a Marriott brand management company).

On the decision to attend career fairs even in his freshman year, he said: “I think that was one of the biggest successes I had that helped me get multiple job offers when I graduated… not necessarily was I looking for a job, it was more just about networking at that point in time.”

DiFalco recommends that current students make the same decision to attend the career fair every year. Not only does this help the students receive job offers and make connections, he said, but it also lets students learn what core values each company has, to decide which company aligns best with their personal core values and to select a job with the best fit.

By going to the career fair early, DiFalco added, students can also ask recruiters what their company is looking for and how they can fill those requirements before they graduate.

“Don’t wait until you’re a senior to start showing up to the career fair,” DiFalco said. “Over the course of my college career, I began to form relationships with those recruiters, which was fantastic.”

“Ultimately, when graduation came around, I was fortunate enough to get offers from all of [the companies I was interested in],” he continued.

He selected Marriott despite receiving higher salary offers from other companies, he said, because he felt Marriott was the best fit for him. After working with Marriott for over a decade, DiFalco is still happy with his decision.

And the decision was a truly critical one: According to DiFalco, the first company, boss or leadership team defines so much of students’ careers as they go forward. For this reason, he advises students to choose carefully.

During his time as a student, DiFalco said, an added bonus of the career fair was that he also utilized his career fair recruiter contacts as resources for projects in his classes. If they couldn’t help him, he said, they would find him someone in their company who could.

Now, DiFalco can use his experience to be an even better recruiter, and he works to help students the same way his recruiters helped him.

“I pulled upon a lot of my experiences of the recruiters I had,” DiFalco said. “For me, it was about getting to know the students on a personal level, staying in contact with them during the year to be able to provide the same support structure I had as a student.”

“It’s about getting that next generation ready for those leadership roles.”

Part of that next generation is current hospitality student Lyle Bienstock, who hopes to get involved in the corporate side of the hospitality industry with a company like Deloitte, Marriott or PricewaterhouseCoopers after he graduates. By attending the career fair, Bienstock said that he was able to network and learn about the industry in a way he couldn’t in the classroom.

“My experiences at the [Hospitality] Career Fairs have been extremely rewarding,” Bienstock said. “Luckily, the past two years, I have gone into the career fair with summer internships locked down already. But it was still great to network and meet with recruiters from some of the top hospitality firms in the nation.”

Bienstock added that the career fair gives him the opportunity to practice talking to the companies he hopes to work at one day. The wide range of companies present surprised him, he said, and this helped him to further develop his interest in the accounting and finance sides of the hospitality industry.

“It may not seem like much at first, to shake the hand of a recruiter and have a brief conversation with them, but trust me, it’s worth it,” Bienstock said. “Many of the recruiters that I met during my freshman year attended the fair the following two years, and remembered me as soon as I approached their booth.”

“As a freshman, that one conversation or handshake can lead you to an internship or job offer in your junior or senior year.”

Students interested in experiencing the next Hospitality Career Fair should mark their calendars for Monday, Feb. 27, and Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2017.