Growth Spurt: How 2020 Supercharged Our Career Fair

Last November, Nimsu Ng ’22 teamed up with fellow Shea Center student executive board members Felicia Chan ’21, Maggie Yan ’22, and Alex Poole ’23 to plan the spring 2021 annual career fair. But by that time COVID had made it clear that if the show would go on for a third year, they’d need to seriously rethink it.

In true entrepreneurial fashion, Ng’s team pivoted, coming up with the idea to take the next fair virtual and rebranding it for a broader tech-oriented audience.

“Previously known as the Startup & Entrepreneurship Fair, the career fair originally came out of this notion that there’s a heavy emphasis on traditional finance roles in the Carroll School of Management,” Ng said. “And while those are great roles, they’re not for everybody.”

Here’s how the event got a new name, grew to five days, and attracted an outstanding 320 students and 43 companies from all over the world.

Spark for entrepreneurship

Ng says her team had started to sense a spark for entrepreneurship among CSOM students. “We wanted to be able to connect students with the companies and people making these incredibly innovative ideas happen,” she said.

In its original form, the career fair had brought companies from across Greater Boston to campus to network with students.

“COVID obviously changed things, because we could no longer have the number of employers we’ve had in the past come to campus in one shared space,” said Ng. “We weren't even allowed to have 10 people.”

The challenge was how to retain an atmosphere of meaningful connections for all who participated while expanding the definition of entrepreneurship for students.

Go virtual and go big

The answer came in a flash: Go virtual and go bigger by rebranding the event as the Tech & Entrepreneurship Career Fair. “We found that tech was a broader term that really encompasses everything we’re interested in,” said Ng.

“We emphasize that entrepreneurship is more than just about founding a company,” she said. “It’s taking problems you face every day and finding innovative solutions for them.”

The team started planning the event over Thanksgiving weekend and met once a week straight through launch on March 1. “Our goal was to figure out how to deliver the best possible experience in this very weird time when no one knew what networking in a virtual environment would look like,” Ng said.

In lieu of posters and flyers, they reached out to student clubs, asking them to share the news about the fair with their members. And they did “a lot of social media marketing,” taking turns posting every day for two weeks.

Ng said Twitter worked well to reach employers, Instagram proved effective with students, and LinkedIn engaged both employers and alumni, who were eager to support their networks.

Big names and broad reach

Save for minor glitches, the virtual event went off without a hitch. Ng’s team hosted daily 30-minute info sessions and 15-minute coffee chats non-stop from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Altogether, they booked 61 information sessions and 129 coffee chats.

Ten companies participated. Who were they and where did they Zoom in from?

“We had everything from the big companies you recognize to small ones that have just gotten up and running,” Ng said. Among the bigger names were Amazon, Google, and Drizly, fresh from its Uber acquisition. From the VC world, they got Volition Capital and Amity Ventures. In the tech space, VMware and Jebbit.

Thanks to Zoom, time and geography posed no issues. This year’s event drew companies from Boston to Silicon Valley and as far away as South Africa. “Getting that diversity of locations was one aspect students loved and that wouldn’t have been possible to do in person,” Ng said.

She said people like Volition Capital’s Mark Hardy, who were transparent about their experiences, struck up the best conversations. And students always had interesting questions. “We had some employers who said our students ask harder questions than some of their investors,” Ng said.

Where to from here?

Ng foresees doing a hybrid of online and on campus for the 2022 career fair.

“We’d still want to bring back all the companies we can but allow Boston companies who want to meet our students in person and shake their hands to come back to campus. And for sure, we’'ll keep that coffee chat portion,” she said.

The best part of the 2021 career fair, Ng said, came at each day’s end. “The fair has always ended with company representatives saying ‘if you have more questions, here’s my email, I’m happy to continue the conversation.’ This year, that happened at the end of every single session.”

Ng brimmed with pride over alumni attendance. “Our alumni network was so willing to connect and support one another,” she said. “That’s a gem I’ll forever be grateful for.”