The semi-annual WSC career fair jumped to success with over 400 students attending last Wednesday in the Student Center.

In addition to a strong student attendance, the career fair hosted 80 employers and their booths. Career services spent all day setting up, hosting and tearing down the fair for students to attend and talk with employers. The career fair lasted from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

“It’s good to start building connections,” said Heather Reinhardt, career services specialist. “With so many applications being online anymore it’s really hard to make face to face contact with somebody, so the career fair is at least one good opportunity where you can actually visit with somebody and make a good first impression with them too.”

Students who chose to attend the fair were able to have their resumes looked over by career services ahead of time to be prepared for future employers.

“The more you go, the more confidence you have when you go to each career fair that you attend, plus employers could be looking for internships too,” said Reinhardt. “Some of our employers come back each time, so if it’s an impressive student they’ll actually remember them each time they come back.

“We send out probably over a couple thousand invites to the career fair for a variety of majors,” said Reinhardt. “It does seem though that some majors maybe just don’t recruit through a career fair type event, but I would say we had a variety of business, criminal justice, communications, we probably had a little something for everybody.”

Freshman Carrigan Okerlund agreed that there was a little bit for everyone.

“My favorite part was probably how many people showed up from different career opportunities,” said Okerlund. “For me there was a lot of police departments and correction facilities.”

Okerlund said the career fair was a good opportunity presented by Wayne State, so people might as well take advantage and use it to meet employers.

“I want to go into parole and probation,” said Okerlund. “They didn’t really have any of those, so then when I went and talked to the police they said I could start in corrections and then transfer over to parole which kind of gave me more ideas of a career instead of only parole.”

Reinhardt said they were getting feedback from employers who attended the career fair and they had good things to say about WSC students.

One employer said, “Always impressed with students we talk with.” Another employer said, “This is one event that we really like being a part of, we hope your students will follow through with us, we think highly of the students that are turning out.”

Reinhardt said the career fair was a success and that she saw a lot of students dressed up nice for employers.