Opportunities and opportunists alike filled the MATC Downtown Campus Thursday, Sept. 27, as the fall “All Majors” Job Fair commenced.

This free event was sponsored and curated by the Mequon Campus Student Government. It was designed to bring job candidates and area employers together for a résumé wielding, skill-set slinging, free-for-all-and, for most, it did not disappoint.
There were over 80 employers ranging from Cousin’s Subs and Nestle USA to the Wisconsin Department of Corrections and the U.S. Army.

The event was mainly meant to cater to the students at MATC; so people who were studying a trade, or in school for nursing or health care were in the right spot.

For Nicole Thurmond, a Nursing student, it was a chance to physically hand her résumé to her potential employer and put a face with her name. She said she also sends her résumé via e-mail as a kind of “double-tap” designed to set her apart from the other applicants. On the employers’ side, it’s a chance to see a range of different ages and types in a less formal setting.
Rich Kula, a financial advisor at AXA Advisors, said of the fair, “We’re looking for diverse hires in terms of age and ethnicity. In the career fair setting, people approach you who you wouldn’t get a one-on-one interview with right away. We can pick and choose and actually invite someone over who, looking at an ad in the paper, may have been intimidated by us.”

Dan Soto, a Service Director at Hall Volkswagen, thinks there are other benefits to this format as well. Soto states, “If you have someone who thinks they’ll be a receptionist all their life but they have the skill-set to be in human resources or sales, they aren’t going to go out and apply for those jobs. They’ll apply for receptionist positions. With a job fair, there’s the chance that the employer may see someone who is looking for one job, but has the potential for another job more suited to them.”
From the employee point of view, he added, “If you’re job seeking, and dedicated to getting a job, and you make your full-time job be the procurement of a job; say you head out at 8 a.m. and search until 5 p.m. every day, how many [potential employers] do you think you can hit? Comfortably and thoroughly, maybe five, maybe seven if you’re really moving.

At a job fair, someone can easily hit 40 or 50 in two hours.”This was definitely the case as the Main Building and the Student Center were bustling with dedicated, business suited individuals ready to take on the ever-daunting job hunt.

Good luck to all who attended.