By Eden Binder

The University of Maryland Career Center’s Spring Career and Internship Fair at Adele H. Stamp Student Union was in full swing last week from Wednesday to Friday.

“I would say [it has been] a success because we are able to provide students with connections to opportunities and ultimately for [the career center], that’s the goal,” said Allyn Powell, director of the University Career Center & The President’s Promise.

Over 200 recruiters at the fair provided many opportunities for students to familiarize themselves with different companies in their field of study, but the sheer number of recruiters can be overwhelming, especially without a game plan.

Junior information sciences major Brandon Fung, who also went to the Fall Career Fair, said he prepared a strategy beforehand

Fung is looking for an internship for the summer and says that he felt that his best lead at the fair was with Environmental Systems Research Institute, a geospatial mapping company.

“I currently intern for a federal geographic data committee, and I already use [ESRI] products a ton, so I think I would be a good fit to be an intern for them.”

Though, it’s not only personal interest in a company that’s needed to gain a job or an internship, but being able to make a good impression on recruiters with certain skill sets.

“Communication skills [and the ability to] communicate is important. As you’ll need to tailor communication for people you work with,” stressed Katrina Earl, a recruiter from Epic, a company specializing in software development for healthcare organizations.

Epic’s summer 2023 internship slate is already full, said Earl, but the company is offering 2024 summer internships and full-time positions, and found itself in high demand at UMD’s fair.

Abel Teshome was at the fair recruiting for M&T bank, where he works as a software engineer for M&T Realty Capital Corporation, a subsidiary of the organization. Teshome said that the company is looking for someone who has a professional background beyond just the necessary hard skills.

“Scoring high on coding challenge[s] is something we look at highly, [but also] being able to communicate your thought process around the challenge,” said Teshome.

Teshome said that a lot of students were interested in M&T Bank and were enthusiastic about the bank coming back to the fair in the fall.

“Yeah [we’ll be back], we came here last year and in the fall it was really successful and we liked it a lot.”

Recruiters from companies such as M&T, Epic, and the technological giant Yahoo fared well in terms of student interest. However, many construction companies in attendance were left disappointed.

Recruiter Matt Holl, a project engineer at S&B USA construction, which was looking for both tech and non tech people on the business side of the company said that the lack of people who came to the table made the company question if it was worth coming back.

“Hopefully we’d like to come on a different day because today was a bit of a bust,” said Holl.

Many companies in less flashy fields, such as construction, often struggle to stand out to students when competing with Yahoo. Still, freshman biological sciences major Pearly Gal-Edd said that friendly recruiters stood out to her.

“If they had a big smile on their face and were passionate about their company, I really enjoyed [that].”

Gal-Edd, who also went to the career fair in the fall, mentioned that she is looking forward to next year’s fair but felt that the university should not have organized the tables alphabetically.

“I wish that it was organized by sector or that there was a guide for what field each company was in because there were definitely times where I pitched myself and it was a company that had nothing to do with my interests,” Gal-Edd said.

Quinn Farah, the career events coordinator of the University Career Center and the President’s Promise, who was  in charge of the organization of the fair, commented that research was a key component to success at the fair.

“We provide information online, so a really good idea would be to research these opportunities beforehand so that when you get to the career fair you spend less time figuring out which ones may be better for you,” Farah said.

While the career fair and preparation for the career fair are important, said Powell, these are only the first steps to success in the professional world after UMD.

“It doesn’t start and stop with the career fair. [The Career Center] does so many workshops and programs that we invite and welcome students to take advantage of throughout the academic year. [We’re] happy to support each student wherever they are on their journey to get to wherever it is where they want to be.”

Featured Image: The Stamp lobby was used to welcome both students and recruiters to the University Career Center Career Fair on Feb. 16, 2023 in Stamp Student Union. Photo by Eden Binder.