With the holiday season approaching, many students start to scramble and find ways to make some quick cash to spend on presents for families and friends, and with the help of Skyline, students are given the opportunity to search for jobs in their very own cafeteria.
On Wednesday, Nov. 12, Skyline College held the Holiday Job Fair from 9:30 a.m. – 1 p.m. with about 36 companies and 72 employers in attendance. Students had a wide range of companies to choose from including UPS, Bank of the West and the Army among others.
“There are people out here to see what’s on the market,” Sgt. Mike Hughes of the San Francisco Police Department says. “I think it’s good for freshmen to come walk through and see what jobs are available for them. We’ve had about a dozen show interests. We give out a lot of information and it’s up to the people to follow through.”
Hughes has been working job fairs for the SFPD for three years now, and they are only one of many employers who do so each year.
“We have a database of over 300 employers that we have built relationships with,” says Career Center Coordinator Virginia Padron, who also sponsored the event. “There are returning employers that keep coming back every year and then we get new ones. This year, we were able to get Kaiser for the first time which I’m really excited about.”
Kaiser representative Aundrea Taylor says she got an e-mail from her manager who wanted them to attend, and she has some advice for students searching for jobs.
“The only thing I recommend is to come prepared with a resume,” Taylor says. “A lot of students didn’t know about it. It was last minute and they didn’t have a resume.”
Whether or not students came prepared, many still showed interest, as over 100 students filled the cafeteria going booth by booth to search for the perfect job.
“I’ve checked out a few banks,” Skyline student Liliana Martinez says. “I’ve checked out the Army, and that’s about it. Everything else is pretty much child care and I checked out the Army out of curiosity. They don’t have a lot of things here towards my major.”
Although not every student who attended found the right job for them, Padron still considers the event a success.
“We had a great student turnout,” Padron says. “We have about 150 students that signed in through our career center booth, but that doesn’t count all the students. These students that signed in were willing to get information from us and do the raffle, that doesn’t include all the students that attended today. I think it has been a really successful event and I look forward to having another event in April when we have our Career Expo coming up.”
