Career fairs, employer information sessions, and interviews will be conducted online in the fall.
Credit: Caroline GibsonAll on-campus employer engagement events will be held virtually in fall 2020.
Penn Career Services announced on Thursday that career fairs, employer information sessions, and interviews will be conducted online in the fall to accommodate students who will not return to campus and employer partners who have staff travel restrictions in place.
Career fairs will be conducted virtually through Handshake, Career Services’ platform for student and alumni employment search.
The virtual career fairs will allow flexible video, audio, and text communications with individuals and groups of students. Career Services is currently registering more employers for the events.
There will be seven career fairs throughout the semester with themes including finance, insurance, and real estate; non-profit and government; communications and marketing; engineering, and nursing.
Students can see which employers have registered for recruiting events and can schedule virtual career advising appointments through Handshake. They can also connect with employers through prescheduled one-on-one appointments ahead of the fair, group sessions during the fair, and “on-the-spot" one-on-one appointments during the fair.
Penn Career Services plans to release more information about participating in on-campus fall recruiting in August.
Following a shift in hiring policies led by major banking firms, Penn's on-campus recruiting moved from the spring semester to the fall in 2016 — giving students more time to secure their summer internships and post-graduation plans.
Although on-campus recruiting maintained its large presence on campus in 2019, many prestigious banking firms have already shifted to a more digital presence. Companies' shift away from on-campus interviews, towards using online interviewing services such as HireVue and phone interviews, was led by a desire to recruit more equitably from many different schools across the country.
Students' career outcomes were not dramatically impacted by this change.
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