Employers are always happy to meet Institute students at our career fairs!
As the job market and degree programs evolve, so does the Institute‘s Career Fair. For the first 15 years of its existence, the event was organized by language program career advisor extraordinaire Jeff Wood, with a focus on language-related opportunities, and was held on campus. After the Center for Advising and Career Services (CACS) was launched in 2009, the fair was expanded to include all programs at MIIS and moved to the Monterey Conference Center.
The past five years have included a lot of good lessons that have led CACS to redesign the annual Career Fair. That means going back to the roots of the event by hosting a language-focused event at the Monterey Conference Center, while simultaneously adopting a different approach for the policy and management programs, by taking the Career Fair on the road to where the employers are, in San Francisco and Washington D.C.
“Employers have consistently identified MIIS students as outstanding talent,” says Dayton Hughes, director of outreach and employer relations. The only real issue, he goes on to explain “has been that due to the limited class size, and therefore number of graduates, many employers have not been able to justify a recruiting trip to Monterey.” If early registration numbers for the San Francisco and Washington events are any indication, employers are responding positively to this change.
The reaction among students has been similarly positive. Mentru Nagbe (MPA ’16) believes that this will provide both students and employers with a “heightened clarity and sense of cohesion.” Peter Seilheimer (MAIEM ’16) agrees and adds that he thinks these smaller events will give students better opportunity to engage with employers on a more personal level.
The language-focused Career Fair will be held in Monterey on February 27th, to be followed by the event in San Francisco on March 13th and in Washington D.C. on March 20th. The latter event will be held during spring break at MIIS, and is connected to the annual career-focused student trip to the Capitol. If you would like to attend any of the three MIIS Careers Fairs as either a job seeker or an employer, please visit the CACS Career Fair page on our website, go.miis.edu/careerfair.