Category: career fair

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Campus Career Fairs, 2016-17

Save the dates! The fairs in boldface are of particular interest for English department majors, but all of these fairs are open to all majors.

Campus Career Fairs for 2016-2017 Academic Year

Fall Semester:
Engineering Career Fair – September 7 & 8, 2016
Business Career Fair – September 14 & 15, 2016
Engineering Employment EXPO—September 19 & 20, 2016
FOCUS: The Job Fair for Career-Focused, Paid, Campus Work—September 21, 2016
ACES & Sciences Career Fair—October 6, 2016
LAS in CU: LAS Local Internship Fair—October 19, 2016
Graduate & Professional School Fair—October 19, 2016
International Career Forum—October 21, 2016
Fall Illini Career & Internship Fair—October 26, 2016

Spring Semester:
Business Career Fair—February 1 & 2, 2017
Arts and Culture Career Fair (held in Chicago for UIUC and UIC students)—February 3, 2017
Engineering Career Fair—February 7 & 8, 2017
Start Up Career Fair—February 9, 2017
Educators’ Fair—March 6, 2017 at EIU
Illini Career and Internship Fair—April 5, 2017
Research Park Career Fair—spring 2017

 

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What to Expect at a Career Fair (and Why You Should Go)

The Research Park Career Fair is still ahead of us (March 15), but much of the spring career fair season is winding down.  If you went to a career fair this year, well done!  Career fairs are a great way to meet potential employers, explore career paths, and practice your interviewing and networking skills.  If you didn’t go to one, definitely plan to take advantage of them next year!  While some fairs (e.g., the Engineering Career Fair, the Urban Planning Fair) are intended for students with specific technical skills, many fairs feature recruiters seeking students from a variety of programs. Fairs are also targeted towards particular fields of relevance to department of English majors.  The Design+ Job Fair, the Arts and Culture Fair in Chicago, the Educators Fair, and the Illini Career and Internship Fair are particularly oriented towards the interests and skills of people who study English and Creative Writing.

Two English majors who attended the recent Arts and Culture Career Fair in Chicago were willing to share their experiences.  Meghan McCoy (a sophomore) and Henry Yeary (a freshman, who also attended the Business Career Fair last month) independently offered the same two pieces of advice based on their experience:

Continue reading “What to Expect at a Career Fair (and Why You Should Go)”

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Getting Ready for the Illini Career and Internship Fair

Illini Career Fair 2016

Are employers interested in talking to you?

YES.

Desirable English/CW major skills

  • Communication (both oral and written)
  • Knowledge about cross-cultural issues, diversity, inclusivity
  • Research and information retrieval
  • Analytical thinking
  • Creative thinking and problem-solving
  • Effective with ambiguity, uncertainty, incomplete information
  • Learning and synthesizing new ideas
  • Teamwork

(English majors: You’ve explored 1500  years of the written word, from Beowulf to Derrida, some of the densest and most challenging prose ever written: complexity doesn’t scare you.)

(Creative writing majors: You’re skilled at working with groups to bring out the best in yourself and others; you know how to bring creative rigor to any problems and how to hold a team to high standards.)

Continue reading “Getting Ready for the Illini Career and Internship Fair”

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Tips for Doing Your Best at UIUC’s Spring Career Fairs

It’s a big week for career fairs at the University of Illinois! The Business Career Fair takes place at the ARC this Wednesday, Feb. 3 and Thursday, Feb 4 from 2 to 6 pm, and the Arts and Culture Career Fair takes place in Chicago (UIC Student Center East (3rd Floor)) this Friday, Feb. 5 from 12 to 2 pm. And there’s a host of other career fairs scheduled later in February and March, which we encourage you to attend!

Arts and Culture Career Fair banner headingPNG

Last week, Laura Miller, a senior in English; Kenny Miller a senior in Creative Writing; and Kirstin Wilcox, the English Department’s Director of Internships offered some advice about how to be successful at the upcoming career fairs. Here’s what they had to say:

Start going to career fairs early in college, and go multiple times

As with most things in life, you’ll perform better at career fairs with experience. So don’t wait until Spring semester of your senior year to dust off your professional attire for your Continue reading “Tips for Doing Your Best at UIUC’s Spring Career Fairs”