This year’s career fair held at Sneaky Park on Tuesday was an opportunity for many graduating seniors and current students to get information on jobs and internships.
Thirty employers attended the fair allowing students to learn more about the companies and see what opportunities were available. Companies like ABC, Inc., PFF Bank & Trust and Wells Fargo are a few that attended.
“I work here in La Verne and a great thing about this career fair was that it’s in the community,” said Chan Pech from Wells Fargo Financial. “What’s great about University of La Verne is that it’s a center point for college students. Anyone can work within different branches.”
Student turnout was minimal. There were scattered bunches throughout the day, but the attendance was not as high as last year’s.
Parking situations may have been the reason. Many students were upset that the entire library parking lot was blocked off for the employers.
Associated Student Federation Treasurer Chris Skraba agreed that parking was a problem and said it was something that needed to be brought up in an ASF meeting.
However students who did attend did not mind that parking was taken away because the opportunity meant a lot.
“I actually like this career fair, there is a great team of employers,” junior international business major Mario Rodriguez said. “The parking situation is only for one day and it’s out of courtesy for the employers for coming out here, so it doesn’t really bother me.”
This year some companies attended for the first time to give the University’s career fair a try and see how things turned out while other companies attended because they had an affiliation with the school.
“We have three partners that graduated from here,” said Human Resource Manager Laura Acosta from the company of Vicenti, Lloyd and Stutzman LLP.
The company is a business consultant firm that is trying to expand its recruiting process to include ULV; however, it has not had much success hiring anyone from the University.
“We are trying to recruit the seniors for full-time positions and the positions are meant for those who are business or accounting majors,” Acosta said.
The firm also offers internships for juniors.
Other companies like ABC, Inc., which many students are familiar with, attended the career fair for the first time. A ULV student is an intern there and that motivated ABC to come out to recruit more interns.
“Many students don’t know that our company hires more than just jobs in the creative field,”
ABC representative Tiffany Zaporteza said. “We have many jobs in the marketing and technology field and we wanted to promote that.
“Currently we aren’t looking for full-time applicants but simply junior or senior interns,” she added.
For some students like senior speech communication major Jaclyn Urqiudez who is about to graduate and cannot do a student internship, opportunities at the fair proved slim since many of the employers were looking for interns.
“I liked it,” Rodriguez said. “I wish they had some free food though. I mean the cozy atmosphere symbolizes La Verne and that’s nice to come to.”
Amira Seyoum can be reached at aseyoum@ulv.edu.