Virtual career services offer benefits for students, employers
Even during a pandemic, students are still seeking real-world work experience and employers want to hire top-notch engineering talent.
In March, Engineering Career Services (ECS) began transitioning their helpful offerings, including student advising appointments, workshops and career fairs, to virtual platforms.
“It was not easy at all, but my team is amazing and everybody just came together and got it done,” explained ECS Director Amy Thaci. “It was a really long summer because we were trying to learn as much as we could to make the virtual experiences meaningful for students and employers."
By the start of fall semester they had selected a career-related theme for each week, such as kicking off a job search, building professional networks and interviewing successfully. For each theme, the ECS team created accompanying videos, blog posts and events.
The next major hurdle came in September with the 54th annual Engineering Expo. As Ohio State’s largest career fair, Expo normally takes over the Ohio Union for two days and welcomes more than 200 employers and up to 5,000 students.
ECS teamed with Handshake—a web-based, career services management system—to host their first virtual career fair.
“It was all new to us and new to Handshake too. This was the first time they did a virtual career fair. So we were all learning at once,” Thaci said.
The lack of face-to-face interactions and actual handshakes had minimal effect on attendance—4,789 students and 195 employers participated.
“We still had a good variety of recruiters. We had civil engineering firms, manufacturing, consulting, software development, biomedical—a good representation of all the different areas,” explained Thaci. “All the majors were represented.”
The virtual platform enabled recruiters to meet with students one-on-one and in groups. Over the two-day event, employers conducted 15,208 individual and 299 group sessions with students.
Electrical and computer engineering major Maya Tamaskar found the virtual Engineering Expo to be just as beneficial as previous years. Plus, it offered some new benefits, such as being able to have private one-on-one time with recruiters, rather than talking to them in a crowded banquet hall.
“Overall, it was really great and provided a lot of options to be flexible,” Tamaskar said. “Because it was longer than in years past, you're able to plan out your schedule around classes. That was really nice.”
Strategically scheduled the week before Engineering Expo, Career Week also went virtual. It offered workshops, resume reviews and mock interviews to prepare juniors, graduating seniors and graduate students with the professional skills necessary for a successful full-time job search. Eleven companies participated in the premier event, Industry Night, which connects students and employers.
ECS’ virtual workshops have been so popular with students that staff plan to continue offering some online even after in-person activities resume.
“We’ve seen more attendance at some of our workshops. Because it’s virtual, it really was more accessible to certain students,” Thaci said.
Tamaskar agrees, “I went to one resume workshop. I like the online events, you can just log on when it's convenient.”
The online Recruiter in Residence sessions have also been popular. Without the limitation of physical space constraints, ECS has been able to host more employers. Twenty-two companies participated autumn semester, hosting resume reviews, mock interviews, ask-the-expert sessions and other networking events.
As the pandemic evolves, Engineering Career Services plans to continue virtual events and services into spring semester, including the SWE Fair on February 3, 2021, and Spring Into Your Career Fair on April 6.
As the 2021 SWE Fair coordinator, Tamaskar said she is looking forward to working with ECS to move the event online.
Despite the many changes this academic year, Thaci’s outlook on hiring for engineering students remains positive.
“I have not yet seen a tremendous impact on hiring. Companies are still focused on attending events and coming to hire those students from their top-tier schools,” she said. “The companies [we’ve heard from] said ‘We’re going to have internships. We plan on hiring the same number of students, but it might be virtual instead of in-person.’”
by Candi Clevenger, College of Engineering Communications, clevenger.87@osu.edu
