Our View: Focused fairs better for students
November 5, 2013
Last week’s Eagle Career Expo and Techxpo showed two sides of the career fair coin for Georgia Southern University. The Eagle Career Expo exposed students to a wide variety of employers looking for many different majors to go into different fields. In comparison, the Techxpo offered a concentrated group of employers that were all looking for skill sets found in students in the IT and CS fields.
Students who went to the Techxpo knew they were going into a career fair with employers looking for particular skills and abilities. Students who did not feel like they had skills that were necessary for that expo simply did not show up. The expo was labeled and marketed as being geared towards computer-savvy students and made it clear from the start.
Conversely, the Eagle Career Expo was marketed as a fair that would be inclusive to all students that were looking to find a career. However, many majors had severely limited representation in the jobs and companies that were available at the fair. For example, graphic design majors only had one job that was specifically looking for people in that major.
Career fairs should be based on colleges in order for students to be connected with the most relevant job opportunities to them. Having more frequent, focused fairs based on colleges would benefit both students and employers and GSU should strive to have more of them.