I registered a couple days earlier (on that eventbrite site mentioned in the earlier post) so I was all set with my printed receipt/ticket, all excited about the companies I’d see. I met up with my friend at the SUB on the main floor, and headed up to check out the the career fair.
The first thing I noticed was their lack of attendees (but it was 10am, everyone was probably in class) Most of the companies were recruiting applied science students, or commerce students. Even the ones who had a sign saying “recruiting science students” were mostly looking for computer science. I’d say the most outstanding company we visited was Microsoft. The man was great at explaining internships, and what positions there were. We managed to get cute sew-on badges too. Unfortunately, programming positions just don’t attract a bio science student. So we moved on, and picked up nifty little gifts from other companies – candy, a pen, and this really cool blue box with a mini stapler, mini staple remover, and a mini hole puncher.
There were panels going on during the fair too and I managed to pull my friend into the “Health Sector” one. They basically discussed important points on how to get into med schools, as opposed to possible work experience opportunities or landing internships. We ditched that and went downstairs to grab food instead. (A&W coupons, 2 breakfast sandwich for $3!!) There was another panel “Business Savvy without a Business Degree” which was more useful than the previous one on Health Sector, but they just described their experience on landing their current positions. One girl, i believe named Lisa who was a representative of Impact, told us she sent out resumes to 600 job openings on monsters.ca and only got one reply 2 months later – her present HR Recruitment position. Another lady from Miracle, talked about her experience at McDonald’s. The third lady was a history major who said she focused on her “soft skills” – presentation skills, interviewing skills/experience, projects, etc. Essentially, it sounded more like how to GET a job, than finding a job in business admin? I guess it was fairly interesting.