Career Day 2007 Survey Results

Completed Survey	Number of Responses	Overall Percentage
Length of the job fair
Just right	67	69.1%
Too Long	27	27.8%
Too Short	1	1.0%
Blank	2	2.1%
Overall Job Fair Rating
Excellent	29	29.9%
Good	57	58.8%
Average	6	6.2%
Fair	0	0.0%
Poor	1	1.0%
Blank	4	4.1%

What was your opinion of the students you met?

Completed Survey	Number of Responses	Overall Percentage
Dressed Appropriately
yes	93	95.9%
no	0	0.0%
Blank	4	4.1%
Knowledgeable about your organization?
yes	42	43.3%
no	46	47.4%
Blank	9	9.3%
Seemed interested and well-prepared?
yes	83	85.6%
no	8	8.2%
Blank	6	6.2%

Advise you would offer to student/alumni attending a fair?

• Check out smaller co's for interest. Larger co's get a lot of traffic.
• Avoid black "Power Suit"
• Wear sensible shoes, no less than 2 people on a booth
• Shower. Be ready to provide detailed answers regarding info on resume.
• It really helped when students wrote their major on their name tag!
• Be aware of first impression. be yourself. Be truthful about whether the position or company truly interest you. We are hoping to hire for careers not just a job.
• Be ready, be decisive, know what you want.
• Provide an updated resume and follow up with companies they're interested in.
• Please make sure you know which company you are talking to when you come. i.e. I work for such and such, don't ask me about how I like working on a competitor's product.
• do the homework about a company before approach the table.
• Determine what relevant courses to internship you've had and call them out.
• No jeans. Hand resume to recruiter 1st thing
• Most seemed prepared and had visited our website. Others had not. We only listed fulltime interests and many asked about internships.
• Being able to say why they are interested in our company is a very positive thing.
• Adapt your resume to reflect interest of each company. Your resume can make or break a potential interview. Also know what the company does before you speak with them. You can get that info from the guidebook.
• Find a way to get company exposure prior to career fair.
• Still had two guys show up with shirts from bottom of laundry hamper. The women were all professionally attired.
• Don't be so nervous. Enjoy yourself.
• Dress appropriately, pay attention to personal grooming, try to learn something about the company ahead of time.
• Don't be afraid to approach the recruiters. Have someone look over your resume.
• Do a little more research before Career Day
• 20 - 30 percent should be advised to speak proper English. I'm not referring to international students.
• Research company and understand yourself - how you fit in.
• Be confident and well prepared. Know what the company does.
• Read about the companies and their product.
• Be prepared to talk.
• Professional attitude. Confidence.
• Research a company before you speak to them if only to read their inf in the job fair book.
• Students should stop by the career fair booth of those companies they have interviews with to say hello, introduce themselves and get co literature to be better prepared for their interview. Some did, some didn't.
• Try to "sell" yourself more - I want to find out more about YOU.
• Better dressed. Even coop seemed less prepared then usually.
• While I am happy to answer questions about Trinity, people serious about employment should have a general idea about what we do or at least a decent answer as to why they are interested in consulting and/or environmental work. Additionally, as we do consulting work, communication skills and personableness are very important to us. So students should do what they need to do to prepare to come across as well-spoken and thoughtful, even if they don't have all the answers.
• Very impressed with most students
• Research companies and talk with your faculty about companies, too.
• Know something about the company
• Prepare yourself by accessing websites and have an idea of future goals and plans.
• Make sure GPA is on resume. If too low, don't waste my time, but you don't know my cutoff so if you don't show your GPA I'll assume it's lower than I want and not pursue you.
• Be prepared, know your companies, be assertive.
• I'm very impressed with MTU students. Normally we hit Northern and UWSP and similar and the kids are NOWHERE near as prepared.
• Be more prepared with questions to ask and resumes to distribute.
• We are not a regular attendee so we are not well known on campus. Many students look at our name and assume we are in the process industry. We actually make control valves. More research.
• Students overall were prepared but individual research about companies they're interested in would be helpful. Already know the types of openings or positions they have. Also be able to answer why that company specifically for you.
• Be prepared to discuss timing, location, and know which positions are open and available.
• Come prepared to talk about co & your goals - remember who you give resumes to.

Has your organization hired a Michigan Tech graduate in the last few years?

Completed Survey	Number of Responses	Overall Percentage
Yes	76	78.4%
No	14	14.4%
Blank	7	7.2%
If yes, how have they performed
Awesome Doing a good job. Effective Excellent quality. Excellent to marginal Excellent. We have 3 on staff. Excellent. Well prepared, motivated and capable of learning quickly. Excellent... that's why we keep coming back! Exceptionable. Great. Well prepared and hard working. Hired 3 in past year. All performing well. I am one of three that have been hired. I would say above average Intern 2007. Doing very well. Coming back. Numerous hired. Doing well Satisfactorily Strong, technical performer. Good fit in our organization. They have performed to our expectations thus far. They've done well. Very satisfied. Very well. We keep coming back! Very well. MTU grads are well-rounded and have an excellent educational background. We had a summer intern 2007. Very good. We hired an Env. Engineer in August 2007. so far very good. We hired our first intern over the summer. Very pleased. We love MTU. This is one of our core schools to attend for recruiting. Impressed by graduates and students. We now have gone from one to three Tech grads and are looking for more. Well, however it is obvious the they had very little actual design experience. Need more labs. Well, we hope to hire more Well. We seem to have good luck with MTU grads.

In reference to job performance by a MTU graduate at your facility, are there any recommendations for our future graduates which would prepare them for the job market (courses, experience, etc.)

• A bit more interview prep. particularly on ? not directly related to the job. Some are a bit alarmed by questions such as "tell me about yourself."
• An MTU grad here said that an MTU degree provides great prep for real world experiences, and that a graduate should seek to use and further develop those technical and leadership skills.
• As an environmental engineering firm we have a 40 hr OSHA training that is required. Some schools are offering this to students so this field have a jump start on the job market.
• AutoCAD and Inventor Training. Catia, Unigraphics etc... are not common among our spec companies
• Be sure to coop and intern and keep the GPA up. Be involved.
• CATIA design experience. hands or baja or formula shaw hand in and team interest.
• Civil engineers need computer drafting Auto CAD or Micro Station.
• Co op experience
• Common sense, flexibility, and a willingness to work will go a long way.
• Communication - presentation skills. How to create budgets.
• Consider internship program with structure similar to Purdue.
• Coop and intern experience for full time
• Coop or intern if possible
• Engineering students should take some construction management courses.
• Gain practical experience, understand mfg practices, constraints, etc.
• Get as much hands on experience as possible, via internships, labs, or real work applicable to career path.
• Get experience early in schooling (soph year coop).
• Get internships and coops. Experience is number 1.
• Get them into steel design for civils during their 3rd yr so they have background for summer internship.
• get work experience, demonstrate leadership skills and ability to work in teams.
• Hands on experience is a big plus.
• Internship experience
• Internships and consulting class that is offered in the CE Dept.
• Internships and consulting class that is offered in the CE Dept.
• Internships, co-ops, keep GPA above 3.0
• Keep promoting Java and Object Oriented class for IT major.
• Lean/Six Sigma
• Maturity
• More CAD and creation of mechanical drawings!
• More CAD experience
• More manufacturing classes. Enterprise experience, internships and co-ops
• More systems engineering. Orient students to internships and co-ops early - as freshmen so they get experience.
• MTU graduates have been the best we've seen.
• Need more design experience. Labs should allow student to design, build, and test.
• Nope
• Participate in all job fairs to get face to face experience
• Power courses.
• Practical thinking skills, good communication skills, someone with hands on experience
• Prepare them more for interview settings
• Prepare them so they know companies usually require 3.0 GPA
• Programming class for mechanical engineers
• Project management courses are a plus.
• Proper English Grammar
• Require applied field forestry skills.
• Students should be able to express what they are looking for in a position/company/career.
• Teach PRO E
• We are a power company and prefer a student to have as many courses in power as possible.
• We like when a student has worked (sometimes jobs outside their fields), work ethic is very important to us.
• We met students with good involvement in activities for interns. But for FT we require a 3.0. We couldn't consider some for FT that we would for interns.
• We would like to hire more co-op students and many said they were not interested because co-oping would set them back a year.
• Why, why, why do you not teach Microstation instead of AutoCAD for the transportation civil engineers?
• Writing skills are important and I think classes need to reflect the need for writing on the job more.

Other Comments

• Enjoy the fairs and experiences with MTU and their students. Career fair as well as other deans have commented how proud they are of the students, the programs and you can tell take pride in the school and in preparing for events like these. Great to partner with.
• Great fair!! Very organized and prepared! One of the best!
• If on the weekend students don't have to miss labs or classes to come to the career fair. Some more companies might come into town, too.
• In preparing your students for interviews in your courses, make sure they are able to discuss industrial safety, safety behavior, and keeping safety at forefront of any project or job done. Some candidates interviewed did not address safety when asked question about how to proceed with a task to get measurements off operating equipment.
• It is just a little frustrating when students come to your booth with a blank stare and ask what your company does. They should look it up!
• It was ran well and the students were great to talk to. We will be back next year.
• Last hour was slow. Good number of alumni recruiters.
• MTU can separate its engineers from the world competition be teaching oral communications/interpersonal/sales skills - smart people are everywhere. The best engineers are also very good communicators. At least start a Toastmasters Int'l Club (there was one in the early 90's).
• Our co-op program seems to be structured differently that what students expect. We require 3 co-op sessions - for HS, working during a summer is an internship.
• Some students may not be available during designated hours.
• Students need to have a balance of everything they are involved in. How can one be allowed to have a 2.1 GPA.
• The last hour is not well attended.
• We have hired 1 or 2 in the past
• You put on a great fair every semester. We'll be back in Feb!