Fall job fair attracts array of students, employers to campus

Kaylie Smith came to Pitt’s job fair last spring looking for an internship. Instead, she… Kaylie Smith came to Pitt’s job fair last spring looking for an internship. Instead, she found a part-time job as an associate at Aflac.

Smith, then a sophomore, wasn’t familiar with Aflac’s job opportunities before she met Vicky Veltri, a representative from the company who was at the job fair last semester.

“I knew she was crazy,” Smith said, laughing. “We talked for a while and she offered me an interview.”

Smith currently attends Pitt full-time and works 30 hours a week as a district sales coordinator, a recent promotion that she received just last week. Yesterday, she and Veltri attended the job fair and spoke to students together.

Although Smith may have been one of the luckier ones, hundreds of other hopeful Pitt students crowded into the Ballroom, the Assembly Room and the Kurtzman Room in the William Pitt Union yesterday looking to network or meet potential employers at Career Services’ fall job fair.

Career Services holds bi-annual job fairs every fall and spring and usually invites over 100 employers each season. Career Services expects about 800 students to attend the job fair this year. Students can attend the event provided they have their student ID card.

Yesterday, students at the job fair spoke to representatives from business, human service and nonprofit organizations. Students can speak with representatives from engineering, scientific and technical organizations today.

Smith advised students to look through the information packets they were provided so they would know which company representatives they wanted to talk to, but she advised students not to overlook anyone.

Nancy Cifrulak, the special events and marketing coordinator at Career Services, said that companies at this semester’s job fair were hiring spring graduates as well as fall graduates.

“People graduating in April think they should wait until the spring job fair,” Cifrulak said. “No. They should be here now.”

Cifrulak said that students should wear appropriate business attire, including skirts, suits and ties. She also encouraged students to bring multiple resumes with them to pass out to different company representatives.

She also said that companies have been impressed by Pitt students in the past.

“We always get compliments from employers regarding the students’ professional behavior,” Cifrulak said.

But the job fairs are not only for graduating seniors. Everyone is encouraged to attend as long as they wear appropriate business attire and have a student ID card. Cifrulak also advised freshman to attend, even if they just looked around at the other students and watched how to approach company representatives.

Recent Pitt graduate Chris Taylor also attended the fair as a representative for National Enterprise Systems, a debt collection agency. Taylor became familiar with NES through Pitt’s on-campus interviews, offered through Career Services.

After getting a degree in information science, Taylor got a job as the company’s manager of Information Technology. He said two other Pitt graduates became employees at the company as well.

“The people we get from Pitt have been very good,” Taylor’s associate, Jeff Pollak, said.

Both Taylor and Pollak agreed that the most important thing between the employer and the potential applicant was communication. Good employees will most likely have an outgoing personality and the ability to hold a conversation by using more than one word answers, they said.

“We get candidates that are smart and can program anything you want,” Taylor said. “But they might not be able to communicate well.”

While Cifrulak encouraged the attending students to wear suits, a few representatives from Amsted Rail — an industrial components manufacturing company — said they weren’t concerned with an interviewee’s outfit.

“We’re not interested in a suit,” Brown said. “Just be yourself.”

Typically at job fairs, Brown talks to students about their interests. He said if their interests match those of Amsted Rail, its representatives will spend a long time talking to them.

Caldwell agreed, saying that honest responses are much more important than outfits.

“I’d much rather have a response that doesn’t sound rehearsed rather than one that sounds like it has been planned,” she said.

Other students at the job fair were turned off by the suits. Anne Marie Price, a senior majoring in nonfiction writing, called the atmosphere “too professional.”

She noted that nearly everyone was wearing black suits and black skirts.

“It’s like a funeral,” she said.

Price, who plans on doing ministry work after she graduates, said she wasn’t looking for a job, but she attended the fair to check out the opportunities Pitt provided.

She thought that it would be a good opportunity for students trying to get hired in local businesses. Coupled with the friendly staff, Price thought the event was a success.

“Overall, I think it is something that Student Affairs should be proud of,” she said.