Virtual university-wide career fair kicks off Tuesday

Rochester Institute of Technology students are still making connections for spring co-ops and full-time employment, even though they can’t physically meet company recruiters this semester due to COVID-19 travel and gathering restrictions.

The first week of the virtual university-wide career fair begins Tuesday and continues through Friday, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The second week will be held Oct. 5-9.

“We’re so excited at the turnout of the participating companies,” said Maria Richart, director of RIT’s Career Services and Cooperative Education. “That says something about our students and the quality of an RIT education and the demand that’s out there.”

More than 110 companies are participating, with 157 full-time and co-op jobs available. Employers may continue to register for the second week.

“We thought we would have 50 companies,” Richart said. “We didn’t really think we would get this kind of response.”

National, regional, and local companies including Hershey, Wegmans, Paychex, M&T Bank and L3Harris are participating, as well as research opportunities at Johns Hopkins University and Brookhaven National Laboratories.

The employee presentations will all be live on video calls with recruiters speaking, interacting, and asking and answering questions with to up to 50 students at a time. The presentations are scheduled to avoid conflicts with companies offering similar opportunities giving their presentations at the same time.

The presentations will be recorded, and each session will be captioned and posted on the Career Services and Cooperative Education website, Richart said.

To make the virtual recruiting a more personal experience, students can view and sign up for the scheduled presentations, which are broken down in five industry tracks:

• Business Processes, for positions including operations, marketing, finance, supply chain communications, and human resources.
• Computing, for positions including hardware, software, data, web, and networking.
• Creative, for positions including design, photography, art, and animation.
• Engineering, for positions including engineering-related fields, manufacturing, and hardware.
• Science/Research, for positions in the hard sciences, including math, statistics, data, and life sciences.

Recruiters will also follow up with students after the fair to schedule virtual interviews.

Smaller virtual career fairs are held this semester including one for accounting, which was held this week, and one for civil engineering, scheduled Oct. 1.

Students or alumni do not have to preregister, but it is recommended, as space may be limited in some of the sessions. For more information and to register, visit the Career Fair webpage.