#georgia_tech

Congratulations to our amazing IAC Student Ambassadors for 2016 - 2017!

It might just be because I’m a senior, but lately, it feels like “recruiting season” lasts much longer than just one season. At Georgia Tech, so many students define a big part of their success by where and who they’ve interned or co-oped for in their time here. Even from the first day of freshman year, it was made very clear that in any spare time I had, I must be searching for jobs on an automatic loop while I’m here, because it makes a huge difference for where I could find myself after graduating.

As competitive as it is, I do sort of enjoy the challenge of applying, interviewing, and networking for jobs. It does come with practice, and I’m really glad to see that the method of finding them has become more innovative at Tech.

This is because I find myself more and more avoiding the traditional “career fair.” I think that today, here, with the type of students we have and the type of challenging work we want to be faced with, students need a better method of connecting with companies. The career fair can be tedious, exhausting, and ultimately, really outdated. It becomes about the stress of standing out in a massive crowd more than the goal of meeting and connecting with recruiters to learn about and share what you want. It becomes about tirelessly perfecting an elevator pitch that will probably be no different from anyone else’s. Handing a resume that will just be part of a pile. Waiting hours on end to just get a few words with a recruiter who will inevitably say, “It was nice to meet you. Please apply online.”

For an introvert, the experience is daunting, filled with small, fast, conversations and no depth to the interaction. For an extrovert, the experience does not allow them enough time, space, or fulfillment to express themselves how they want to. It is a lot like speed dating - it’s really hard to gauge how you fit with someone from talking to them for two to three minutes. Sure, if you really click, you can get their contact info and reach out afterwards, but if you haven’t had the chance to get to know each other, you’re really just taking a gamble and more often than not will end up frustrated. Recruiters can pretty much instantly tell who they want from resumes, but students should get more chances to get to know the companies, too.

That’s what frustrates me about mass career fairs, and I think many of my peers would agree. The tiny, insignificant amount of interaction students and recruiters get benefits no one, and is not practical with the amount of students who are looking for a job in this day and age.

That’s why I strongly embrace closer, more innovative interactions with companies, which the Ivan Allen College has also been doing really well. Starting with the basic info session, where students self-select to take time out of their day to get to know a company in depth. Then, there are case competitions and hackathons, where you can spend days or even weeks finding solutions to problems that are very similar to what people in those firms do on a day to day basis. There are also lunch and learns, such as the ones the School of Economics has recently started, that bring together a small group of students and recruiters who can talk, and where wasting time or rushing through a discussion is not a worry anymore.

I just recently became a liberal arts major, and one of the many amazing benefits to being an Ivan Allen Student is that we get unique opportunities to be sought out by big companies. It is really nice to be in a small, niche part of the bigger Georgia Tech, where, when companies decide they need the best skills liberal arts students can offer, they come looking for us.

All of these options require varying amounts of money and time from the recruiting teams, without a doubt. But wouldn’t that money be better spent on hosting events where the students will attend because they really care, and not just because they see a fast track and have time to kill? It doesn’t seem worthwhile to me for companies to spend money on traditional career fairs anymore, where they are just another booth, and I am just another student. Georgia Tech, to me, epitomizes innovation in all senses of the word. And in such a competitive, career-driven environment, I think that the method of navigating career opportunities has lots of room to be innovative.