By Anna Ostmann

Lindenwood has always endeavored to provide students with  resources and opportunities for success, and even though this year has been full of obstacles, Lindenwood has more than risen to the challenge. The university’s administration, faculty,  staff members, and students have shown a remarkable ability to adapt in these new circumstances. One recent example of these incredible efforts to continue providing gold-standard  support for Lindenwood students is this semester’s Career Fairs.

In the past, career fairs held at Lindenwood have given students the opportunity to explore different careers in their field and to talk to representatives from potential employers. Students attending the fairs were able to discover potential jobs and may have even discovered applications for their degrees that they had not considered previously. The fairs provide networking opportunities as well and can even lead to job offers given the large number of recruiters who attend.

For the 2020 fall semester, Lindenwood was faced with a new challenge: how can the university hold a career fair, traditionally hosted in large open rooms with space for dozens or sometimes hundreds of people, while still ensuring everyone’s health and safety? And so, the Virtual Career Fairs were born. Going virtual seemed to be the  obvious solution, but there were still a large number of logistics to figure out. How would it be conducted? It’s not the same as hosting a class virtually: career fairs are far larger and more dynamic events. The solution was to create an event that required forward planning on the part of not only faculty and representatives but also on that of the students.

While the fairs used to be large drop-in events for students to visit whenever they were available, Virtual Career fairs were divided by Schools (Art and Humanities, Education, and Accounting and Finance) and took place throughout October and the first half of November. Students were informed of the events by email and asked to register for specific sessions with various employers. This allowed the fair to remain organized while also giving everyone the chance to meet and talk to specific recruiters. Many of the meetings were one-on-one and were the perfect chance for students to begin networking for potential careers and for employers to meet some of Lindenwood’s many talented students.

As one student attendee of the Humanities Virtual Career Fair explained: “It  was a great experience. I got to meet with a few employers and get a better idea of some of the jobs that are out there for a psych.  major. I thought it would be kind of annoying to deal with the virtual format, but it actually went pretty smoothly.” Despite the many obstacles and other challenges, Lindenwood has once again ensured that its students will achieve real success.