With a turnout of 97 employers, Career Services hosted its largest spring career fair to date Friday in Houston Hall.
The spring fair, which is now in its fourth year, is intended to bring in employers from industries that do not participate in On-Campus Recruiting, said senior associate director of Career Services Kelly Cleary.
“Not every Penn student wants to, or should want to, go into finance and consulting,” said Cleary, who organized the fair. “We hold this event because we know even more of our students are interested in other industries and there are plenty of employers in those industries who are interested in hiring.”
The fair brought in employers from areas like communications, marketing, retail, nonprofit and education based on input from student surveys, Cleary said.
After hearing many requests for more opportunities in media and communications, Career Services partnered with the Undergraduate Media and Entertainment club to brainstorm employers to reach out to this year, Cleary said.
The spring career fair is one among 10 career fairs Career Services hosts annually. While at the fall fair most employers are either OCR companies or from those industries, Cleary said, the spring fair tries to focus on bringing a wide variety of companies.
Wharton sophomore Madeline Vincent, who attended the fair in pursuit of a summer internship, found the event to be a “good cross-section” of job opportunities.
While Engineering sophomore Gawain Lau was likewise impressed by overall turnout, he found the fair “a little lacking in engineering.”
According to Cleary, companies’ hiring timelines factor heavily into whether they participate in any given fair.
Because marketing and communications jobs tend to hire in March, the spring fair was one of the first chances for students to see employers in those industries, said College junior Ali Armour, who found marketing to be underrepresented in OCR.
Additionally, public sector and nonprofit employers are more difficult to bring to campus because of the fair registration fees, Cleary said. These kinds of employers generally prefer to attend larger fairs where they can see more students.
Students interested in nonprofit work can attend a nonprofit-specific fair this Friday at Bryn Mawr College.
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