Fall Career Fair Takeaways

Last Wednesday was a day full of career-related activities. I helped out CDC for setting up for the career fair, then I got dressed up myself and went out there to find the employers that would like to hire me for their companies. My major is Industrial Engineering, and most companies that attend the career fair do not specifically look for WPI students who would qualify for Industrial Engineering related positions.

Think about it, we’re a school that has more than 300 students in its Electrical & Computer Engineering, about 200 students in Robotics, a similarly high number in Chemical Engineering and Computer Science. So these majors that have big student populations attract most of the employers. They are almost the majors that the companies know our school for, thus the recruiters often times do not worry about looking for people who study less popular majors while they are at WPI.

However, this shouldn’t stop you. If you know that a company has a division or operation that employs people from your major field, you totally should pursue an opportunity. This is what I exactly did at the Career Fair.

After my internship in the financial industry this past summer, I am interested in financial institutions and banks as future employers. However, I realized that many of the financial companies that were coming to the career fair were looking for actuarial math majors to hire for more technical positions or rotational programs. I told myself ‘I have nothing to lose if I talk to them, in fact it would be a good chance to practice my elevator speech.’

When I went to table for Sun Life Financial, I talked to a lady from their HR department and she told me that although the recruiting team at this career fair is only looking for actuarial math majors, the company has a commercial leadership development program that I should totally apply for. She was very interested in my resume and told me that the leadership program would fit my qualities and past experience very well. She even gave me the contact information of the head-recruiter for the leadership program and introduced me to an analyst at the table who is going through that program right now. Two days later, I received an email saying they are reviewing my resume and will be in touch soon. How awesome is that? My suggestion from this experience: Don’t give up, if you know that you could work for that company, if you get excited when you go through the company’s website, talk to the people who know the company the best: its employers! Use the networking opportunity at the career fair for your benefit 😉

Evy