Bradley hosts two general job and internship fairs as well as seven smaller, specific fairs every year. However, these and other Smith Career Center resources may not be used to their full potential.
According to Executive Director of the SCC Jon Neidy, it is not difficult to find employers to come to Bradley from industries that typically recruit at job fairs. However, there may not be employers from some specific majors because of the way those industries hire.
“Sometimes, students aren’t informed enough or haven’t been taught the way their particular majors hire,” Neidy said. “[For example,] theater companies aren’t at job fairs hiring theater majors because that’s just not how the industry works. They might go to a conference or open audition, but not a job fair.”
Junior public relations major Josephine Mallari said she thinks the list of job fair employers can be misleading because it will advertise opportunities for communication and business majors together when she believes employers are often just looking for marketing and other business majors.
“As a student studying communication, it’s a waste of my time trying to prepare and get ready for job fairs when in the end I leave with nothing,” Mallari said.
According to Associate Director of the SCC Molly Drenckpohl, students should focus less on finding employers for a specific major and more on how students can market themselves to companies with the skills they have gained from their fields of study.
“It might be sitting down and figuring out what employers would like your skills— what jobs would I like that are similar to what I want to do and would help me gain those transferable skills to where I want to be,” Drenckpohl said.
Neidy said it is also important to remember that Bradley may not have a significant reputation or enough students within a major to warrant a company coming to campus to interview.
“We don’t have enough teacher education majors to warrant a teacher job fair, so Bradley encourages students to go to Illinois State’s teacher job fair,” Neidy said.
According to Drenckpohl, the job fairs offer not only local employers, but companies from a variety of places. She said if students think they are unable to find a company from a certain location at the fairs, they should utilize the alumni portion of LinkedIn, which contains over 32,000 contacts.
Students using the tool are able to filter their search by the alumni’s locations, companies and areas of work.
“Bradley alum are so passionate about helping Bradley students,” Drenckpohl said. “Ideally, you’ll get some good advice, and in a perfect world they’ll forward your résumé to their connections.”
