By: Jason Ioffe
On April 12th the Starr Career Development Center hosted its annual Spring Undergraduate Career Fair. Over 350 students donned business attire and brought freshly polished resumes to meet with over 30 recruiters in the Newman Vertical Campus’s gymnasium.
Senior students made up the largest turnout at the event – no doubt, taking advantage of the term’s last career fair to explore options for post-graduation. But surprisingly Baruch freshmen also made up almost a quarter of the fair’s attendees. Whether these freshmen aimed to learn the ropes of career development or wanted to hit the ground running with an internship, they were confident enough to stand toe with upperclassmen.
Freshman Jason Wu was very optimistic about meeting employers and standing out from the crowd. “As a freshman, I expected to be at a disadvantage, but it wasn’t really a problem at all,” he said.
Last February’s undergraduate internship fair may have had a larger turnout of nearly 600 students, but the attendance during April’s career fair ensured that all students had an equal chance to speak to recruiters over the course of four hours.
Safayet Kajol a sophomore at Baruch said, “The career fair is a wonderful opportunity for students to interact with recruiters and learn about opportunities that they can apply to for in the future.”
Representatives from American International Group (AIG) maintained a steady line of students throughout the event as they, for the first time in history, recruited for internal auditing directly on-campus at Baruch.
AIG Technology Audit Manager, Sumukh Shah, said he met with many sophomores and Computer Information System majors that day compared to the students he spoke with during last February’s internship fair. He and his colleagues also mentioned they were happy with how engaging and friendly the students were.
A similar sentiment was shared by Kim Wong, a recruiter from the CUNY IT Specialists Internship program. “We love Baruch students because they are very responsible and hard-working. We love working with the SCDC,” she said.
SCDC Introduces New Career Fair Resources
- Earlier this year, the SCDC began using iPods to give students attending the day an easy and simple experience when sharing their feedback. Both the staff and Baruch students recognize the sleek, simple design of the iPods as not only an easy way of offering feedback but an attractive way of engaging students in commenting on the resources.
- In addition to the iPod feedback forms, a new coat check system was introduced on April 12th thanks to efforts from the Peers for Careers and SCDC senior staff members. While coat checks came with a $1 fee from students, a portion of the proceeds were donated directly to Relay for Life, to help fund cancer research. Within just a few hours, this new system raised over $70 for the cause.
- With introductions to new resources at the fair, the SCDC also continued to lend ties and suit jackets to students in need to help Baruch students make the best first impression.
Career fairs are powerful networking mediums available to Baruch students. The SCDC is committed to making the experience for students a valuable and productive one. If you missed this semester’s career fair, there will be a chance to attend other career fairs this fall. All it costs is the time spent putting the finishing touches on your resume and attending the fair polished and ready–a small price to pay for the potential opportunities to discover.
Jason is a sophomore at Baruch majoring in Computer Information Systems. He is currently a Peer for Career at the Starr Career Development Center and the Webmaster of Starrlights.