Courtesy: Thunderbird Career Management Center
As the morning of October 24th dawned, anyone on campus may have been fooled into thinking it was just another other gorgeous Fall day at Thunderbird: green grass, sunny skies, and birds chirping. As the clock drew close to 10 am, the calm was broken by a flurry of students, all dressed to the nines in business formal attire and heading to the TEC. They were on a mission, a date with destiny, on course for the big C: Career Fair.
Meticulously organized by the Thunderbird Career Management Center, the Fall 2013 Thunderbird Career Fair attracted 32 companies from across the US. From financial services to marketing to supply chain to operations management, pretty much every type of career aspirations of T-Birds were on offer. Eager (and a tad nervous) first years flocked to the business booth, determined to land the internship that could settle them for next summer. Seasoned second years pursued full-time opportunities in and outside the US, as companies tried to be accommodating of students outside the US, even going as far as pointing them to solid opportunities in their home countries and other worldwide destination. Lines for some of the top name companies like Coca-Cola, ExxonMobile, and Johnson & Johnson had almost never ending queues as students competed in a very real sense with their fellow classmates.
Career student liaison officers, who were chosen by the CMC, occupied a place of pride as they got the opportunity to interact more closely with their assigned companies than their fellow students could. A solid way of building contacts and networking! For a select lot of students, their hard work, networking, and professional attitude paid big dividends as they landed interviews for Friday. It was heartening to see no one come away dejected as the career fair spurred them on to do well in their interviews, future job hunts, as well as learning how to improve their pitch for the next career fair they will be attending. Most came away with goodies as well with companies stocking swag like flashlights, mints, hand sanitizers, to ensure that no one went away empty handed. All part and parcel of the career fair game.
As the morning turned to afternoon, recruiters and students alike slowly started to be worn down by the incessant conversations and when 2pm rolled around, a relived and satisfied lot of students and recruiters made their way out of the TEC, hopeful that their week’s efforts would soon bear fruit. Here’s to hoping that we hear shouts of joy in the coming weeks when our classmates find out the results of those efforts!