Drawing 80 employers and more than 300 students, Alfred State College (ASC) recently held its largest virtual career fair to date.
The Alfred State Fall 2020 Virtual Career Fair took place last week on JobLink, the online platform that ASC has used to host its career fairs virtually since March. Through this tool, employers log in and initiate the ability to live chat. Students then log in, view the available employers, and initiate a chat.
According to Elaine Morsman, director of Alfred State’s Career Development Center, a total of 366 students joined queues to interact with employers during the career fair, with some students even joining multiple queues.
“This event was particularly exciting since it was the first major virtual career fair that we hosted with the newly upgraded platform with full video chat capability,” she said.
Altogether, 315 one-on-one chats and 16 group chats took place during the event. The career fair also allowed registered employers access to ASC’s Fall 2020 Resume Book.
“This book offered employers 180 resumes of students who may not have been able to participate in the virtual career fair,” Morsman said. “Also, this resume book will be active for students to add their resume to and for VCF employers to access throughout the entire fall semester.”
Overall, Morsman said, the career fair went very well and was a success. In fact, many employers complimented Alfred State in their survey responses, saying, “Overall, very good career fair. Best of the three I attended this year” and “I enjoyed how everything was set up. With everything going on in the world, Alfred State was able to adapt and do the best they could.”
“Without the option to go virtual, we would not have been able to make the number and quality of connections between students and employers,” Morsman said.
The Career Development Center is also thankful to faculty for their assistance in making the career fair a success.
“We are grateful to the faculty that helped us get the word out to students by inviting Career Development in their classes – in person and virtually – and encouraging students to participate,” Morsman said.