3 events employers won’t want to miss on college campuses

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Recruiters and hiring managers are constantly searching for top talent to fill job openings for employers. A lot of the talent employers need and want can potentially be found on college campuses. Recruiting on campus means taking time from their busy schedules unless employers reach out to companies like College Recruiter for help with creative advertising solutions. If companies decide to visit institutions of higher education face-to-face, what are the most important events for them to attend? For employers pondering this issue, Jennifer Donovan, Director of News and Media Relations at Michigan Technological University, shares three events recruiters and talent acquisition professionals should attend on her campus.

• “Fall and Spring Career Fairs, where thousands of students can meet employers, learn about their companies and career opportunities, and schedule one-on-one interviews with recruiters on the spot.  More than 500 employers attend Michigan Tech’s Career Fairs each year. This is pretty impressive, considering that we are about as remote as you can get, 500 miles north of Detroit and near no other big cities. Our dynamic Career Fairs probably account for Michigan Tech’s astounding 94 percent job placement rate within 6 months of graduation.

• CareerFest/Industry Days, a series of industry-specific events in a tent in the middle of campus, including hands-on activities, demos, barbecues, lab tours. A very popular and well-attended one is Automotive Days. Others include Steel Days, Rail Days and Mining Days. CareerFest and Industry Days give employers a chance to zero in on the students who are particularly interested in their industry, to inform them and perhaps attract new interest in the field.

• Design Expo, where student teams display and explain their year-long research projects, ranging from a micro-scale processor that can fix pacemakers in place to a dryer for small-scale hops growers. The projects are industry-sponsored and give the students a chance to work across disciplinary lines to solve real-world employer problems. Employers attending Design Expo could see what innovative problem-solvers Michigan Tech students are trained to be.”

Jennifer Donovan, Director of News & Media Relations at Michigan Technological University

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Jennifer Donovan is Director of News and Media Relations at Michigan Technological University, a STEM-focused state university on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. She assigns, writes, and edits stories for the university’s news website and daily e-newsletter, Tech Today, and works with news media locally, nationally, and internationally to help them find expert sources and story ideas. In a previous life, she was a newspaper reporter and magazine writer. She lives in Houghton, Michigan, with her two cats.