Thursday, May 08, 2008

2008 Pre-Graduation Virtual Career Fair Winds Down this Weekend

As we move toward the conclusion of this year's Pre-Graduation Virtual Career Fair ending this coming weekend at THE BLACK COLLEGIAN Online, co-presented by IMDiversity, we are pleased to announce the addition of new opportunities links and recruiter's messages by additional participants including..

Citizen Schools National Teaching Fellowships
Civilian Opportunities with the Department of Navy - Naval Inventory Control Point
New opportunities added by IBM

Additionally and simultaneously, a number of fresh featured Internships/Fellowships and Entry-Level/New College Hire/Trainee Jobs have been posted the job channels at IMDiversity.

These free seasonal features are intended to connect diverse students and new college graduates to employers who are currently publishing opportunities available to students or to entry-level candidates just before graduation. In years, the editors jokingly referred to them as "the procrastinator's special," as in, where were you when the career center was holding all those campus job fairs last semester?

Of course, by this time, the opportunities we were featuring with early summer start dates are few on our jobs databases; over the past couple weeks, they've been replaced by many more that are already being filled for next fall and winter.

But these features this year also dispel the myth "employers have filled their college hiring needs" this close to graduation. We've heard from college recruitment professionals at a diverse range of companies and organizations -- from multinationals to non-profits to government agencies -- who told us the campus recruiting season definitely left them with remaining openings. Others had extended application deadlines for some frankly amazing opportunities, as well as well-paid fellowships, leadership projects, and internships offering substantive work experiences coming up quickly for the summer.

This year's virtual career fair was one of the liveliest and most well-trafficked we've hosted in some time, and also had some of the most robust participation by the companies. We definitely appreciated the time jobseekers took to fill out our Career Fair survey to tell us about which sites they visited and which had scheduled interviews with them. We also appreciated the input of employers who often provided very detailed, helpful advice about applying to the specific opportunities they were hiring for.

We feel that the active participation of both helped make the 2008 Pre-Graduation Virtual Career Fair a real success, and are considering making such a feature a regular event on our sites for the future. Meanwhile, we'll continue to welcome feedback, suggestions or success stories from all who participated, and hope others still seeking a job will visit the fair in its final weekend.

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