Three weeks ago, I went to my first career fair. I walked around a bit, and though I talked to some representatives, I left mostly disappointed. Out of the over 90 companies that came to the fair, I had three successful and helpful interactions. At first, I thought that maybe I wasn’t looking closely enough at who was there. But I soon realized that only about six or seven companies present worked in an area that interests me — communications.
While CareerLAB has made efforts to bring more people from communications industries to Brown, it seems they are still lacking. Any students interested in media, advertising or public relations would benefit from knowing who they can work for, whether large organizations or small. Instead, we continue attending job fairs that focus on technology, consulting and finance jobs and leave empty-handed. For students not interested in finance or technology, the unfair focus on these industries leads to frustration and wasted energy.
Ideally, career fairs should be a great way to learn about the different options for work in each field. They can reduce the amount of time we have to put in as individuals in coming up with a list of possible employers and allow us to focus on researching specific companies to know exactly what interests us. The lack of representation of communications-based industries means that I have to spend a lot more time researching who I want to work for, while students going into finance or technology seem to have the answers right in front of them and a path clearly laid out.
Additionally, as Trisha Anderson wrote in a piece for Examiner.com in 2010, career fairs are important “for everyone to attend because they are a great way to network with local professionals.” As someone interested in working for a publishing house, I haven’t had the opportunity to get my name out there and talk to professionals in the field. This makes me feel as if I am behind on my search for a job.
So many students would benefit from career fairs geared toward media and communications because we would be able to learn not only who these companies are, but also their qualifications for entry-level positions. Students interested in entering these fields lack the information that is handed to students in the technology and finance industries.
While I understand that often participation in the career fairs is a choice by the employer rather than CareerLAB, there does not seem to have been a large effort made to represent a wider variety of employers. As Hannah Begley ’15 told The Herald last month, “CareerLAB and (the) career fair really try to herd students toward finance and consulting.”
Moreover, when CareerLAB mostly brings in finance companies, it perpetuates a vicious cycle. As Kevin Roose ’09 said in a Vox interview this year regarding the prevalence of Ivy Leaguers going into finance, “In a lot of schools it’s these scared organization kids going to Wall Street,” rather than people who actually want to be there. In the end, it tends to be the students with few other ideas who gravitate toward these companies, and CareerLAB isn’t helping in opening our minds to new possibilities.
These firms are looking for the best and the brightest in every field and advertise their jobs as two-year stints that one can easily leave, so they are appealing to wayward graduates. But this has a tendency to lead to unhappy and uninspired bankers rather than people who love their jobs.
Although I don’t think CareerLAB is trying to herd everyone into three limited fields, it does so inadvertently when the options we are seeing for employment as seniors have no variety. This is a very solvable problem. A wider variety of employers could mean that everyone leaving this school has chosen their job based on an informed — rather than limited — decision.
Most of the networking and talking to people in my industry of choice that I have done has come solely from my own efforts. I have acquired contacts through internships and friends, but I worry that I don’t know how to connect to other companies. Without the aid of a career fair geared toward my interests, I have to rely much more on my own limited network of people.
Old bosses and people in the publishing industry have all told me that the best networking they did wasn’t in their undergraduate years, but by participating in summer programs in publishing. It astonished me that more and more, those of us interested in careers other than technology and finance cannot rely on the resources — such as CareerLAB — created to help us navigate the confusing world of finding a job.
CareerLAB offers many resources that will facilitate our search for a job. But this sometimes still feels insufficient when I walk through a career fair and realize that my interests aren’t represented. I feel like I’m missing key companies and firms that could be a great fit for me, and I don’t know where to find them. CareerLAB needs to reach out more to companies in media and communications, but also to museums and galleries, to government employment not related to the military and even NGOs functioning outside the United States. Not all Brown students are interested in consulting, financial or technology careers, and I would like to see the diversity of interests better represented in career fairs.
Sami Isman ’15 wishes the New Yorker were as interested in coming to Brown as she is in working for them.
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