Edmonton—With more than 60 companies on the lookout for young talent, the U of A Engineering Students’ Society Career Fair is like a candy store for engineering students. It’s easy to imagine being overwhelmed by the career opportunities at the two-day event.

Students attending the career fair (running Jan. 31 and Feb. 1) say the event is an important service that helps them find summer jobs, internships and even full-time permanent positions.

“I came here last year and found a lot of companies to apply to and found a job with Imperial Oil,” said Brittany Hiebert-Schnell, a third-year petroleum engineering student. “I was working as a plant operator in Drayton Valley, which is where I’m from, so that was great.”

On Tuesday, Hiebert-Schnell was back again, in her ongoing search for summer employment.

“I’ve already had a couple of interviews but those companies haven’t gotten back to me,” she said. “I figured it would be a good idea to come here and try to increase my opportunities.”

This, in fact, is the same strategy employed by many of the companies. By setting up at the ESS Career Fair, they have direct access to engineering students and increase their odds of hiring qualified students.

“The students here are the U of A are very highly qualified,” said Rachel Flutcher, an early talent program co-ordinator with Flatiron, a Colorado-based engineering firm. The company held an information event on Monday for students interested in career opportunities, and the students in attendance were impressive, she added.

“There is a good cultural fit. A lot of the students want to work with their hands and have had a lot of hands-on experience. So many of them have come up to us and asked ‘Your positions are in the field, right?’ And we do offer a lot of opportunities to learn hands-on from our professionals,” she said.

Second-year electrical engineering student Amir Rahemtulla said visiting the fair was not only a good idea to help find a job, but to sharpen his job-finding skills and to learn about industries he might want to work in as an engineer.

“Coming down here is helping me to just feel more comfortable talking to people and to learn which questions to ask. And it is a good way to get a sense of what different companies do and what they are looking for,” he said, describing the event as “pretty eye-opening.”

“You come here and you see people with different projects, like diamond mines in the Northwest Territories, and there is a big power component to that,” he said. “I find it interesting because it’s mining-engineering-meets-power-engineering. You are starting to see a lot of different disciplines coming together.”