The Sept. 7 Career Fair had the largest amount of employers to date, increasing from 35 last year to 50 and filling the registration wait lists.
Two of the recruiters, Vivint Smart Home and RC Willey Home Furnishings, signed a sponsorship agreement with Career Services before the event’s closing, guaranteeing better branding options. Career Services reaches out to partners about sponsorships when their growth rate of recruitment exceeds 10 or more students a year.
“We’re thrilled at the level of customer service we receive here at Weber State,” RC Willey’s Senior Corporate HR Manager Dan Pessetto said. “We really feel like Career Services has bent over backwards to establish a good relationship… making sure that we, as an employer, have our needs met, and that really makes a big difference for us and for the students.”
RC Willey, for example, became a sponsor due to the growth they were seeing. As Pessetto mentioned, there are currently 300 employees in four states and land has been purchased in California and varying spots in Utah.
Company philosophy has played a role as well, since Pessetto described RC Willey’s focus as allowing more family time for retail workers, which they’ve fit into Weber’s nontraditional status.
“I assume that if we gain this relationship, as time goes on people will understand our brand more and we’ll be able to fill more of our recruiting needs here at Weber State,” Pessetto said.
Career Services Director Winn Stanger said that with the growing student population of 26,000, more companies have been looking for recruitment at the university. The current focus of these brands is to promote internships, some of which the students can complete before they graduate or, 70 percent of the time, find a job.
According to Stanger, majors in technology, engineering, health and the sciences, have been taking precedence in today’s workforce. However, while the fair’s purpose is to help get these students into their fixed career tracks, it also opens up opportunities for liberal arts majors who are wondering how to apply their strengths in mainstream career fields.
“It is the best time to be in college today in the state of Utah,” Stanger said. “We’re at 3.5 percent unemployment, which says that almost all of our majors have opportunities when they graduate. …Throughout our 250 plus majors, most of our students have job offers when they leave.”
Career Services sends out invitations to the recruiters about each Career Fair while checking out each company’s background and their hirings. They also rearrange the structure of the fair as needed – some booths were placed outside Shepherd Union this year to generate traffic– and hand out a satisfaction survey to the employers at the end of the event.
“It’s hard for us as a marketing team to make students understand why this fair is so important…” Alyssa Simmons, the director of the Career Services marketing team, said. “We brought all of these employers to specifically hire Weber State students. This is a great opportunity if you’re looking for a job.”
