The first round of the Winter Virtual Career Fair held by Polar Careers took place on Thursday, February 4 from 9:30 am to 1:30 pm through the CareerFair+ App. The layout was mainly the same as the Fall Virtual Career Fair; the app allows students to look up employer details and set up a video chat appointment that fits with the employer’s schedule. There was an abundant list of majors that recruiters are searching for compared to the Fall Virtual Career Fair. Students can add information about their major, GPA, and upload a resume to highlight themselves to employers. Once students access the CareerFair+ website, employers show up in a list. Students can then filter that list by majors, positions, and industries. After choosing a business to explore, students can visit the establishment’s website for information that is not listed in the overview category, while favoriting that company and writing notes for themselves to look back on.
Debra Berg-Simon, the Employer Relations Specialist, shared the statistics from the Winter Virtual Career Fair. There were 46 companies who registered with 109 recruiters in attendance, 12 of those recruiters were alums. Out of the 174 students who signed up for the event, there were 389 meetings held. The businesses had 38% of their available meeting times filled. Some recruiter feedback include: “Students at this university are always prepared, professional and just great individuals to talk to,” “ONU always had good quality students,” “ONU continually has great students who are well spoken and eager to get into a co-op position,” “Virtual aspect makes the career fair easy to attend,” “Very efficient with preloaded resumes,” “After attending the in-person career fairs for years, I think the virtual career fairs are just as effective,” “Great students,” “ONU has provided great prospects for our summer internship program and we look forward to working with ONU in the future,” “We appreciate the opportunity to talk/recruit students and the virtual platform worked well for us,” “Worked great and got to see some good talent!,” “We continue to see high quality students from ONU and the experience has been positive for us,” “Concept and setup was great,” “I really enjoy these events. Connecting with students and helping them build a network is quite gratifying,” and “I think it is good to stay in touch with ONU students. They are good quality job candidates. We try to attend as many career fairs as possible.”
The second round of the Winter Virtual Ohio Foundation of Independent Colleges (OFIC) Career Fest took place on Friday, February 5 from 10 am to 2 pm through the Handshake App. The Handshake App has roughly the same layout as the CareerFair+ App. The only difference is that the Handshake App only allows students to search through available times, whereas the CareerFair+ App only allows students to search through the company to find an available time. Up to 28 other colleges and universities also attended this career fair hosted by Capital University.