Confidence was the key as about 4,000 students searched for a job or internship on Thursday at the Career Development Center’s job fair in the University Student Union.
About 130 organizations ranging from the military and police to retail and insurance organizations sent recruiters to the fair.
Jennifer Gaines, a recruiter from Enterprise who does workshops for the CDC on how to find a job, said the most important thing students needed to have at the fair was confidence.
“They have to display confidence and they have to be more aggressive than they think they have to be,” Gaines said. “For example, at the career fair, instead of getting dressed up in a suit and walking around and not really talking to anybody … You’ve got to shake people’s hands; you’ve to say ‘hi,’ and you’ve to approach the booths.”
The effect of this confidence on landing a job or internship could’ve reached potential employers even before students themselves physically got to the booths.
“Confidence is huge,” Daniel Almeida, the CDC’s event coordinator, said. “Sometimes [employers] even said to me that ‘we know who we want before they even come up to talk to us.'”
Another important thing students had to mind was their dress; suits and ties for men and professional clothes for the ladies.
“Just not what you wear to class,” Almeida said.
Current students weren’t alone in searching for a job at the fair.
Amir Nia graduated from Cal State Long Beach in spring 2007 with a degree in communications. He’s been for working for his family’s business, but said he was looking for a job outside of that. While outside jobs may be plentiful, the ones this graduate would want aren’t easy to find.
“If I really wanted to find a job I could be a movie theater usher in a second,” Nia said. “But trying to get a little higher job is a little difficult.”
The fair was divided into different sections, with some sections reserved for employers looking for all majors and some for specified majors. A map at the fair listed the employers at the event along with what majors they were looking for.
The CDC also provided workshops the week before and during the job fair in order to help students prepare for it, Almeida said.
The workshops taught students how to build a résumé and even gave them some pointers on how to talk to recruiters at the booth by developing for students a short script.
“I always tell students, ‘How often are you going to have 150 to 200 companies in one room?'” Gaines said. “It’s not going to happen again once you graduate. So, take advantage.”
