Numerous amounts of students looking for future jobs and internships gathered in the Sykes Ballrooms last Thursday afternoon for the 2006 Summer Job Fair.The job fair was presented by the WCU Career Development Center and featured over 60 major employers looking for students to fill both paying and non-paying positions. Several of the top corporations in attendance included Aramark, Acme Markets, Enterprise, United Parcels Service, Hershey Entertainment and Resorts, State Farm Insurance, Comcast Cable Co., Trump Entertainment Inc., Disney and several finance firms. The United States’ Army and Marine Corps were also present and looking for recruits along with the Pennsylvania State Police. There were also several summer camps there including Camp Saginaw, the YMCAs of the Upper Main Line and the Girl Scouts.
Students attended the fair for a variety of reasons. Some were freshmen or sophomores looking for paying summer jobs and internships, while others were upperclassmen looking for solid, full-time careers.
One of those latter students was Nicole Berry, a senior business major. Berry went to the fair to search for a job after she graduates this spring, preferably in real-estate or hotel/restaurant management. She found what she was looking for in job opportunities with Ryan’s Homes Construction Company in sales marketing and management. Berry was highly impressed with the overall quality of the job fair. “On a scale of one to ten, I would rate this job fair at about a nine,” she said. “Everybody was extremely helpful.”
Other students in attendance were simply looking for ways to make their summers more productive by obtaining a paying job or internship to prepare for a future career.
Elana Baukman, a sophomore psychology major, was one student who was hoping to find both. “I came to the job fair last semester and got a job offer from a social works group,” she stated. “I came back this semester to see if there was any other things I could do this summer in my field which I could also get paid for, and there seems to be a wide variety of things for all majors here.” Baukman further said that she was intrigued by the offers from a home for the mentally ill and disabled called Brian’s House, in which she could earn money for on-hand work and at the same time exercise her psychology skills.
Not all the students in attendance were completely impressed with the job fair. West Chester senior Abayomi (Bola) Ogunleye, a criminal justice major who desires to eventually work for the FBI, felt that the job fair could have included more job opportunities for students like him. “The fair was good,” he said, “but I wish they had more programs for criminal justice majors. It seemed like there was just the Pennsylvania State Police and that was it.”
For more information on these or other jobs that were at the fair visit the WCU Career Development Center on the second floor of Lawrence.