Students at California State University, Long Beach swarmed the University Student Union on Thursday, waiting in long lines for a chance hand out their resumes to employers and recruiting professionals.
The university’s annual Science, Technology, Engineering and Math job and internship fair gave students an opportunity to meet and speak with potential employers from those career fields.
Over 70 employers attended the event including organizations and companies like NASA, Boeing, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, Chevron and Facebook.
Reena Hooda, a university recruiter for Facebook, said that the company was one of the most popular employers among students. Hooda said that recruiting for Facebook is the most competitive.
“We truly hire the best of the best,” Hooda said. “Because we hire such a diverse population, everyone’s coming in with different experience from different parts of the world. You’re surrounded every day by some of the smartest people you’ve ever met in your life and that pushes you to want to do better and to want to do more.”
The Career Development Center puts on the STEM fair every year at CSULB. Prior to the job and internship fair, the Career Development Center also helped to prepare students by organizing resume writing and interview preparation workshops.
“I’m hoping that students will just take advantage of the opportunity that there are employers here on the campus,” said Terri Armstrong, communications coordinator for the Career Development Center. “For this to happen in the fall, we start planning right after graduation.”
Recruiting CSULB students from diverse backgrounds was a priority for most employers, Armstrong said.
“Our school is well known for the fact that we have a very diverse student population and that’s what appeals to a lot of employers because they want different students and various cultures represented on their teams,” Armstrong said.
Hooda said that Facebook has been recruiting from the same universities and the STEM job and internship fair was an opportunity to change things up.
“I think Silicon Valley is starting to look a little bit homogenous and we don’t want it to,” Hooda said. “We need more diversity in our workforce, and so we needed to change up the schools.”
