By: Guru T. Gundappa

Time to get serious! This month’s career fairs at PSU provide a perfect opportunity, as I realized last year, to start the search for summer internships, full-time jobs and jobs at non-profits.

• The Engineering & Technology Career Fair on Feb 12 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the Smith Union Ballroom is for those of you who are tech-savvy like me. It brings employers from engineering, computer science, and other technology-related fields to campus. I got a good overview of the healthcare industry when I met representatives from Cambia Health Solutions at the last year’s fair. Although I did not land a summer internship at Cambia, it was a good opportunity to get to learn about the healthcare industry, the players and what are the challenges that employees at Cambia face. This year, I am looking forward to meeting representatives from ecova and HP who will be participating at the fair.
• The All Major Career & Internship Fair is the following day on Feb. 13 in the Smith Union Ballroom from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. It plays host to representatives from more than 60 organizations, including those from private industry, government and non-profits. This was the place where I landed a summer internship last year at CBS Interactive. Speaking to the representative, I was able to find out about the culture of the company, the kind of work being done, the responsibilities and the organization structure. That 10-15 minute talk enabled me to get a good overview of the company. I found that CBS was a perfect place to leverage my technology and managerial skills and what started off as a professional conversation ended with me doing my summer internship at CBS.

And so I have my resume fine-tuned and have started to dedicate time to research the companies coming to the fair. Are you up and running for the event?

For more details see http://www.pdx.edu/advising-career-services/career-fairs