Despite the current economic toil and high unemployment rate, Pitt’s Spring Job and Internship… Despite the current economic toil and high unemployment rate, Pitt’s Spring Job and Internship Fair on Wednesday and Thursday hosted four more companies this year than last year.

Student Employment and Placement Assistance at Pitt sponsored the event, which was free to all Pitt students and alumni and hosted 155 companies.

Ninety-three companies exhibited on Wednesday, which was the technical day, and 62 jobs exhibited Thursday for the non-technical day.

Danielle Hunter, a representative of ChemADVISOR, a chemical engineering company, said, ‘We are looking to hire for many positions, mainly for full-time jobs.’ ‘ She said that there are a variety of roles the company is looking to hire for, including computer engineering and environmental science.

Pitt master’s student Christy Hydrean, studying chemical engineering, attended the job fair looking for a full-time job because she is graduating in April. ‘

‘I didn’t come here looking for a specific company, I’m just looking around,’ said Hydrean. ‘I’m looking for a job in design, and I’m a little nervous about it.’

Dana Monticelli said that her company Compunetix is looking to hire many students for both internships and full-time jobs.

‘We are a telecommunications company that manufactures audio-visual conference systems, and we are hiring for a lot of technical positions,’ she said.

Philip Hilf, a representative from Waddell and Reed, a financial advising company, also said that his company is hiring many students and interns right now.

‘Unlike other companies, this is a great time for our company, because when people are refinancing their mortgages and trying to take out loans, they need our advice,’ he said.

Andrew Ellis, a’ student looking for an accounting internship, had no luck finding companies hiring for this type of job.

‘Everything here seems to be geared toward sales and marketing,’ said Ellis, ‘but I wasn’t expecting to find anything anyway.’ ‘

Even though some students didn’t seem too hopeful about finding jobs and internships, company representatives and Cheryl Finlay, the director of Student Employment and Placement Assistance, was pleased with the job fair’s outcome.

‘We were absolutely thrilled with the number of employers who attended this year and the types of jobs for which they were interviewing,’ she said. ‘We had a strong student turnout as well, so hopefully there were many career matches made these past two days.’ ‘