LIS Career Fair

Yesterday afternoon, a project I started about four months ago came to an end. Since January, I have been working closely with the Career Education Center and the School of Library and Information Science to put together a career fair for the SLIS student population. While the process was long and certainly not without its surprise twists, overall, I am very grateful that I was tasked with being this year’s LIS Career Fair Coordinator. 

For those of you who didn’t get a chance to read an article published at the end of March where I answered questions about the career fair and the preparation process, I won’t bore you with the details. You can find the link to the article here. I will say that one of the most important parts of being the LIS Career Fair Coordinator was ensuring that I had invited exhibitors that represented the various fields within the world of Library and Information Science. Fortunately for Simmons, Boston and the greater Boston area is rife with all sorts of information institutions. Once the invitations were sent, the next big task was trying to figure out how I was going to manage to squeeze at least eighteen exhibitors into the Kotzen Room in Lafavour Hall. While in the past, the LIS Career Fair has been held in the Linda K. Pareksy Conference Center, due to a large group needing the space, the event was moved. Although things were a bit tight, the situation managed to work. I think for what we had to work with, things really turned out well.

For the event itself, everything went perfectly. By 11am, exhibitors were already arriving and getting settled, my volunteers ready to offer assistance if needed. At 12pm, I had a line of LIS students stretching down the hallway! Since this event is all about the students, I was really excited to see so many people waiting to get inside. For the following two hours, I watched SLIS students interact with all of the exhibitors, asking questions, trading business cards, and offering resumes. I took advantage of a lull in the crowd and wandered through the room myself, thanking everyone who attended. And at 2pm, it was over. Months of planning and preparing had paid off; SLIS and the CEC had done it again! 

Thank you everyone who had a hand in putting this event together. I couldn’t have done it without your assistance and support.