WESTFIELD – Nearly 100 students and community memebers attended yesterday’s 8th Spring Career Fair at Westfield State University’s Scanlon Banquet Hall.
Almost 75 employers manned booths, armed with business cards, clipboards and smiles, ready to meet and greet the job-seeking public, who were dressed to impress with resumes in hand.
“The Career Center does a great job,” said Sara Pailis, a junior psychology/criminal justice double major from Lancaster who was working as a student ambassador for the event. “Career Services reached out to us to help, but I’ve had some of my friends go over to the Massachusetts School of Law’s booth and pick up a brochure for me.”
As a school with a reputation for producing top-notch law enforcement officers, many New England police agencies were present, along with insurance companies, marketing and staffing agencies, non-profits and recruiters from all of the branches of the United States military.
“It’s a good, generalized fair,” said Trooper Adam Schmidt of the Maine State Police who originally hails from Sterling and who was also present at WSU’s Criminal Justice Career Fair in the fall. “We get a lot of responses and a lot of Maine law enforcement agencies get candidates from Westfield State.”
Drew Farmington, a sophomore political science major from Belchertown, said he was very interested in checking out the Peace Corps booth.
“I’m interested in the volunteer-based organizations,” said Farmington, who hopes to go on to law school. “They allow you to see the different ways that people live, so you can take that knowledge to better society.”
Robin Laskey, senior associate director of graduate admissions for Lesley University in Cambridge, said that this spring’s event was smaller than the 2014 event, but that the crowd of visitors were very enthusiastic.
“It’s a little slower,” she said, adding that her booth had received about 10 visitors by 3 p.m. “But there are more majors, though less psychology students than last year. The police departments have been getting a lot of traffic.”
Junior Delgado, director of the WSU Career Center, recalled the spring career fairs being held in the Woodward Center before the school moved the event to Scanlon Hall’s banquet facility.
“This is a much more intimate setting for students to talk with prospective employers,” he said. “It’s smaller and less overwhelming.”
“The types of organizations that are at these fairs have awesome opportunities. There are so many to take advantage of,” he said, adding that while there were residents from the greater Westfield community present in the Scanlon Banquet Hall yesterday, there is plenty of room for more at future events.
“As a state university, every event we host is always open to the public and we hope that greater numbers of residents can take advantage in the future,” said Delgado. “In fact, some of these organizations are expressly looking for people who aren’t college students, who have real world experience already.”
The next Westfield State career fair will be for education & non-profit organizations and will be held Tuesday, April 7 from 4-6 p.m. in the Scanlon Banquet Hall.
