CareerFest began last week and continues this week for all Sonoma State students and Alumni. CareerFest is a great opportunity for students to connect with potential employers , learning about and potentially receiving internship and job opportunities.

While there were workshops and panels that occurred last week, CareerFes starts this week. All of the potential employers are set to have Zoom sessions available to talk to students and take a look at their resumes.

There will be many potential employers that will be attending this event according to the career center website. Some of the potential employers that they list include Amy’s Kitchen, City of San Jose, Target, Ygrene Energy Fund, the U.S. Navy, among others. There is a nice combination of local business and companies as well as many other nationwide businesses.

The Career Fair is designed to match students with their ideal employers based on their major. Each day of the career fair is designed to appeal to specific majors. April 6 is the Government & Non Profit Fair, April 7 is the Business, Marketing Finance & Sales Fair, April 8 is the STEM Fair, and April 9 is the Educator Job Fair.

Although the career fair is an event that the Career Center puts on every year, the pandemic has made it a lot harder than previous years. Career Center Representatives Becky Young and Kelsey Bensky talked about the issues with having to adhere to COVID-19 guidelines during this last year. “Setting up a Career Fair is always challenging; it doesn’t matter if it’s virtual or in-person,” they said. “What makes virtual events challenging is really helping students and employers make connections with each other. In person it’s easy to help students coming into the fairs find the right employers, while virtually we have to do a lot more emailing.”

The Career Center has really tried to get a hold of students for this event to make sure that they don’t miss out. This year, they used many techniques like emailing students to make people aware, as well as “partnering with the School of Social Science, the School of Business and Economics, The School of Arts & Humanities and the School of Social Science to make sure students are aware of all the opportunities,” Young and Bensky said. “This partnership has changed the communication between us and our students for the better and really helped students see opportunities exist for them during Career Fest.”

While the career fair is designed to help people get jobs and set themselves up for the future, it’s not only for students that are looking for a job immediately. According to the Career Center, “There are many employers hiring for full-time positions, but there are also internship opportunities for lower & upper division students, and even a few career related part-time jobs/summer opportunities. Some companies are local, but many are not, and are hiring for a variety of locations.” CareerFest will have a variety of employers from all over California available to give students information about potential career opportunities.

“Even for students who are not necessarily looking for a job or internship now, there is a huge benefit in attending – to get familiar with how career fairs work, and to start building connections with companies early,” Young and Bensky continue to say. “It’s a great way to help yourself stand out!”

The biggest benefit to attending CareerFest is the chance to speak directly to employers themselves. Instead of applying for jobs online with just a resume, the career fair gives students a chance to connect with potential employers face to face even if it is online. “This can help students to bypass the process of “resume filtering,” where they apply online to a job but never hear back because their resume wasn’t relevant enough or did not make the cut for whatever reason,” Young and Bensky said. “Not attending means missing out on that opportunity for those critical, direct connections. We encourage students to come dressed professionally and ready to engage with employers.” This opportunity is definitely one that won’t pop up often, so be sure to take advantage of the opportunity and speak to potential employers.

For more information about CareerFest and its many events, head over to the Career Center webpage to see the full schedule of the career fair as well as to see how to register for any one of the specific fairs.