The Career Fair

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This last week here at Mudd, we had our fall career fair. Each semester at Mudd, a career fair is held in the Linde Activities center. It’s a great opportunity for Mudd students to learn about job and internship opportunities, and for students not looking for jobs to collect cool swag!

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The Linde Activity Center

Each semester, dozens of employers from research institutions, tech companies, and really all industries, from insurance to military to bathroom appliances, come to Harvey Mudd because they know that we’ve got great students to offer them. I saw Google, Facebook, Farmer’s Insurance, Yelp, and a plethora of other companies and institutions I hadn’t heard of when I went.

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Over 100 companies attend the HMC career fair

In previous years, the fair was so big and crowded that they had to extend it to 2 days this year instead of 1! It’s a great opportunity to learn about companies and gain some experience with interacting professionally. However, sometimes it’s hard to pick up interest from employers as a freshman, even just to hear about their company. You don’t have experience, or they’re only looking for a certain type of major, and you don’t know what you want to do yet.

To see how people felt about these things, I sat down with Freshman Giulia Castleberg for an interview.

A rad picture of Giulia

A rad picture of Giulia wearing fair swag.

Q: Why did you go to the career fair?

A: I went to the career fair because I thought it would be a good idea to get used to talking to people, and get some exposure to job opportunities in general. Learning how to communicate with people and potential bosses. It was mostly for experience, and a few businesses were hiring first years, and I thought I’d check those out, see if I was interested in them.

Q: Did you get what you wanted?

A: Yeah. I mean, there were some companies that were only looking for juniors and seniors, and that was very evident. They weren’t very friendly, even if I was just trying to figure out what their company was about, and that was disappointing, because I was curious, but it was clear they were only there for the juniors and seniors, so that was iffy.

Q: Do you think companies should spend time talking to underclassmen?

A: I think they should, because if they seem excited and enthusiastic about their company, it’s more likely that underclassmen will have good memories of that company and come to them for jobs in the future.

Q: In previous years, the career fair’s been one day. Do you think it was a good idea to split it into two days?

A: Yes. One day would be exhausting, and there would be a lot of people to go around to. Two days was… still exhausting, but there was more time to sit down, rest a little, plan out what you wanted to do. So maybe the first day didn’t go well, then the second day could go better.

Q: Did you get any cool SWAG at the career fair?

A: Yeah, I got like 11 shirts, and I didn’t even get as many as some people.

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Glorious swag!

The next career fair will be in the Spring. Getting closer to the date, you’ll be able to go on Claremont Connect to get more information, and see who will be attending. Research and job opportunities are a great thing to have, and you’ll appreciate the experience in the future!