<p>I'm just wondering where college students get most of their interviews. Are the majority through career fairs or by applying traditionally? Which is an easier to get an interview?</p>
<p>It’s usually easy to get career center interviews. However, the people doing the interviews are usually on a university circuit and will interview at a bunch of universities for 1 or 2 jobs. If they interview at 10 universities, they may easily interview 80 or 90 candidates for the 1 job. Also, sometimes companies interview to maintain connections with the college and aren’t actually hiring.</p>
<p>Getting an interview with a company through Craigslist, Monster, or other places may be more difficult, but the employer probably is only interviewing a handful (maybe 3 or 4) people for the job, so your chance of landing it is much higher.</p>
<p>I pretty much agree with bigtrees. It’s much easier to get an interview from a company coming to campus, but your odds of getting a job are in general going to be better if you applied traditionally and then were asked for an interview. You should do both (apply traditionally and go to job fairs.)</p>
<p>engineering career services</p>
<p>it’s really great because you get to skip HR and go straight to the engineers and sell yourself…it’s easier to get a position this way because an engineer is going to look at your overall strengths and weaknesses but HR is going to just look at your GPA/school. </p>
<p>plus you got companies actually coming to your school…that’s huge…I had interviews in the teens this year that I wouldn’t have other wise got if they didn’t come to my school…because I am not that competitive… but they came to my school so they figure they might as well interview as much people as possible so it gave me a lot of practice…</p>
<p>and yes, if you get an interview from applying through they’re website that’s a great sign because it means they’re going out of their way…but I don’t see how ECS isn’t the best way to go, you get interviews from companies that are very interested in you, plus on top of that you also get 10-20 others that are just giving you a shot and who knows you might just get it, you have more opportunities.</p>
<p>I’ve actually had a lot of success this year applying directly through career websites of companies.</p>
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<p>People do not interview that many candidates for one job. For most companies, the ratio is somewhere between 5 interviews/job to 7 interviews/job. Companies that go on the college circuit have multiple jobs they are offering.</p>
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<p>I think you might mean one position. Normally I’ve seen companies interviewing a lot of people for a position, but they are usually looking for a bunch of people to fill that position. </p>
<p>OP
I think this depends a lot on the school you go to. There have been a few threads on this site over the years that really open your eyes to the fact that not all career centers are created equal. Personally, I don’t even think there’s a question - hands down it’s easier to go through your career center. </p>
<p>Applying to company websites online, to me, is pretty much like sending your resume off into cyberspace with the expectation that nobody will ever see it. I don’t know what the ratio of applicants/positions normally is on these sites, but it’s definitely worse, much worse. When a company recruits at your school you automatically have an advantage because they are coming there to find you, not the other way around. On top of this, you can be sure that somebody will see your resume - unlike dropping it off into the vast hole of cyberspace. You normally have the opportunity to talk with recruiters in person, which allows you to make a personal impression - a big plus if you have things that may be lacking on your resume.</p>
<p>Let’s put it this way, I’ve had tons of interviews and quite a few offers over the years - not one of them came from applying to their website alone.</p>
<p>On the flip side I have gotten interviews and job offers off of company websites. Many of them list open positions on their “careers” page and if you’re qualified and can craft a good cover letter that shows your interest and ability you have a pretty decent shot. Career fairs/career services are a great way to get interviews too though, so like I said theres no reason not to do both. If there are companies you’d like to work for that don’t come to your school hop on their website and fire off a resume/cover letter, and if they do come to your school talk to them then. Or better yet both. People at job fairs REALLY like to hear that you’ve already submitted your resume to their online system.</p>
<p>“People do not interview that many candidates for one job. For most companies, the ratio is somewhere between 5 interviews/job to 7 interviews/job. Companies that go on the college circuit have multiple jobs they are offering.” </p>
<p>Most companies I interviewed with this year started off with around 45 at Michigan (3 room schedule), brought in around 8 for superday, and eventually hired 1-2.</p>
<p>For instance, I know for a fact that one company interviewed around 40 for first round and hired 2 eventually, with 1 accepting.</p>
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<p>No, “most companies” do not do that. Banks might do something like that with their competitive review process, but that is by no means “most companies”.</p>
<p>“most companies I INTERVIEWED WITH”.
Oh and it’s not just banks. M/B/B did the same. I also interviewed with google and microsoft just for the hack of it and that’s about the same rate too. Microsoft hired a few more but they also interviewed a lot more.</p>
<p>Right, because that makes it impossible to verify. I haven’t seen you in a while, so I forgot how the game works.</p>
<p>Actually, I mean 80 to 90 people for one position. It depends on the economy and the companies hiring needs, but when I did my round of on-campus interviews, I asked each interview how many positions they were hiring for. Several were hiring 1 person. I then looked to see how many campuses they were doing interviews at and noticed it was part of a circuit.</p>
<p>I’m not saying “most” did this but at least a few did. Ball Aerospace and Imation I believe were two companies that were hiring few people and visiting lots of colleges.</p>
<p>Also, some were not hiring but still did interviews. Betchel corporation was one of the companies that I spent an hour and a half interviewing with, even though they announced at the beginning of the interview that they were not hiring and doing interviews just to keep up connections with the college.</p>
<p>So would it be a good idea to apply through the company’s website first, and then if there is no luck, apply through the career fair. Or can you do both?</p>
<p>Sure, you can do both.</p>
<p>I have never had good luck through a company’s website. Larger companeis are requried to post every position that they are hiring on the website, even if they already are planning on hiring someone. So many (or even most) of the job postings you see online are essentially filled even before posting. They may already be planning on filling the position with an internal transfer or contractor.</p>
<p>I’ve had much better luck with sites like Craigslist, Monster, or the newspaper. Companies aren’t required to post every requisition in the paper or Craigslist, so these postings are for jobs they are actively seeking to fill with people outside the company and probably don’t already have someone in mind.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the replies. The reason for my post was to see if it matters if I choose to go to a college that doesn’t have many companies that look good to me at their career fairs. It’s sounding like it matters a little, but not much, since most people get their jobs through the internet.</p>
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<p>Most people do not get their job through the internet, most people seek employment through career fairs. You will be at a severe disadvantage if you attend a school with a poor career services department. In fact, that would be the most important factor for me in choosing a college.</p>
<p>I would pick a school based on the quality and reputation of the engineering department rather than the quality of the career services department. </p>
<p>Employers won’t care if you went to a school with a good career services department. They will care if you went to a school with a good electrical engineering department. I went to a school with a good reputation in engineering but a poor career services department. I have a good job right now that is more incredible than I ever can imagine. I owe that to the quality of my engineering degree.</p>
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<p>I don’t know what you were reading, who posted it, or anything else - but I 100% agree with GP on this. It matters a lot.…</p>
<p>This should be number one or number two on your criterea list. Before you chose where to go to school look at the companies that recruit there, the main industries that are recruiting there, etc… Every program has different affiliations, and this will either help you tremendously or hurt you tremendously. </p>
<p>My personal opinion is that people who end up finding jobs through outside career sources are people who didn’t have the best career services at their school. There’s no reason for me to go to monster.com at all, ever. So long as I keep my GPA above a 3.0 the list of companies and opportunities is nearly endless, interviews are a dime a dozen, and if I really have my heart set on one the companies there’s an extremely high chance I will end up working for them… </p>
<p>The large career fairs here have about 300 companies that attend, they come here looking for students like me… Once I leave here, I highly doubt that I will ever have 300ish companies looking to hire me again, that’s a big deal.</p>
<p>What Purduefrank said (he said it in a different way than GP Burdell) is true. You should look at the companies who recruit at the college you want to go to school at. In my case, we had big name companies like Ball Aerospace, Lockheed Martin, JPL, NAVSEA, and Boeing. These companies have affilation with the engineering department and recruit there because of the quality of the engineering department. That is really important to look at.</p>
<p>In some schools (like mine), the career services department is run by a different part of the college and sucks, even though big name companies come to recruit. I wouldn’t care about how personality the management in the career services department, but would care about who hires graduating engineers.</p>