MTU hosts Spring Career Fair
“This is our spring career fair, it usually happens two weeks after Winter Carnival,” said Steve Patchin, Director of Career Services at MTU. “We have 208 recruiting organizations here today, all looking for top talent. Right now we’re seeing a big trend now. It used to be that they recruited twice a year. They still come to campus twice a year but right now its a 365 day a year recruiting cycle. They just can’t fill their coffers with enough talent.”
As students make there way from one recruiter to another, each representative provides a different opportunity.
“One of the unique employers here is the Discovery Channel,” Patchin said. “They are here looking for a technician to help them on the GoldMine project that they have, you might’ve seen it on TV, a lot of people are pretty excited about that one.”
Once named the Michigan Mining School, and remanded to Michigan’s College of Mines, before it’s current title, Michigan Tech is an obvious place to find a candidate with a geological background, The shows producers had applicants before even setting up their booth.
“We put the information out to the students and they said, the producers, that before they got off the plane, they had about 20 or 30 students who had already submitted their resume,” said Patchin. “They’re very excited. They’ve claimed it was a successful Career Fair before it even started.”
It’s reported that the new hire would examine a mining region in the Yukon region of Alaska or Canada. Other job opportunities presented today included engineering and industrial positions.
“We’re continuously seeing a whole lot of strength in the manufacturing area and also civil engineering,” Patchin said. “There’s a lot of infrastructure going on. To give you an example- we’ve got Black and Veech out here. They can’t take all of the projects that they’re winning bids for because they don’t have enough talent and thats a trend that we’re seeing continuously.”
Each student entered the gym today with a stack of resumes and a personal portfolio and many spoke with representatives who are Alumni of the university. It’s common for companies to send Tech alumni to Career Fair, as it gives the recruiter and job candidate a common conversation piece.
“We’re supplying the talent for the infrastructure,” Patchin said. “For manufacturing, everything is going toward robotics, somebody’s got to manage all of those robotics, and set them up. With civil engineering, somebody’s got to design these roads or tunnels. Our students are basically the brains of making these things happen.”