Face Time at the Career Fair

FaceTime is now more than just a video call. It may be a deciding factor in whether you are hired by a potential employer.

The Overton hotel

At the fall University Wide Career Fair, held yesterday at the Overton Hotel, students had the opportunity to meet with a range of companies, including Dow AgroSciences, TCU Ranch Management, and Halliburton.

“You want to be memorable and you want to be conversational,” Kristen Seideman, the University Career Center assistant director, said.

Tyson account manager Angie Scott said that by coming to the fair, students are speeding up the hiring time for positions. Since they have already had direct contact with the applicants, hirers can put a face with the resume and better decide whether the student is a good fit for the company.

Qualities sought by employers vary from company to company, although there was a high demand for agricultural sciences and business majors.

“It’s exciting to talk to someone with an agricultural background or an agricultural-based degree,” Brad Ferguson, a sales representative for Dow Agrosciences, said.

However, employers may be looking for more than what they can read off a resume.

“We’re looking for great people,” Ferguson said, “who have a work ethic, are self-driven and have leadership qualities.”

Therein lies the great benefit of face time with the employer. They not only attach a face to the resume but also character traits that matter more than anything written on paper, Tyson’s Angie Scott said.

So do students just show up? The term “fair” as defined by Merriam-Webster is “an exposition that promotes the availability of services or opportunities”. However, this career fair was not just to advertise for the companies present.  Many companies said they were truly looking for employees.

Taylor Scherer, who works for Halliburton’s department of university affairs, said Halliburton is actually having a round of interviews this Friday. Texas Tech is ranked third on the list of schools from which Halliburton hires graduates. In the last year, Halliburton has hired 58 full-time engineers from Tech.

“[Wal-Mart] is hiring right now”, said Yvette Chapman, a personnel coordinator for Wal-Mart.

Canden Stanley works for Wal-Mart as a market human resource manager.

“We’ve had good success with folks going through the internship program and then having that desire to take the next step to a management career with us,” Stanley said.Entrance sign to the career fair at the Overton

Not every comment about Tech students was all positive. Dow’s Ferguson made one such comment:

“There’s been a few [students] come by that are very well prepared, who may have looked the company up online but for the most part we’ve had a lot of students come by who don’t know what they want to do, they don’t know anything about our company and they just don’t have a clue.”

So the need to do homework has permeated the classroom and is now present in the employment process.

“It is always best for a student to do their homework and know about the company,” University Career Center’s Seideman said, “because if you’re a company standing in there, you’ve talked to probably a hundred students by now, so if a student has read up on the company and knows things about it, they’ll be able to start a conversation with that recruiter that may make them stand out in the mind of the recruiter.”

If you missed this Career Fair, the University Career Center also holds a university-wide fair in the spring called “Spring Career Connection”. As the spring draws closer, look for information about the fair on the Career Center’s social media sites and on the posters around campus featuring a Red Raider gnome.

 

About Rachel Martin