Students who attended one of last weeks' career fairs sponsored by UW-Madison may have noticed an unusually large number of last-minute cancellations by prospective employers. More than 10 percent of the employers at some fairs were unable to attend due to flight scheduling problems that ensued in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.
At the Career Connections Fair for the Business School last Wednesday, companies such as Daimler-Chrysler and Northwest Airlines canceled their recruitment; the Career Connections fair for engineering students lost 35 employers out of 200 including Boeing and Exxon Mobile, all because of company flight restrictions or inability to fly with the low air traffic. While several employers who had been scheduled to participate could not attend the College of Letters and Science career fair, they were all replaced by several last-minute additions.
Kathy Prem, the Career Connections coordinator in the College of Engineering, said while some students asked about the absence of several companies, she did not think the reduced number of employers stopped students from attending.
'During the fair there were students who wanted to know where a particular company was.' she said. 'We had one student ask whether we would have had better attendance if we waited awhile, but many companies plan their recruitment during the summer, so if we would have rescheduled, attendance would have been lower. We haven't looked at the final student attendance numbers, but we didn't notice a big change in it.'
Karen Stauffacher, assistant dean at the school of business, said the Business School was helping students who were affected by the cancellations find alternative ways of contacting prospective employers.
'We collected r??sum??s of interested students and will forward them to the employers,' she said. 'We're encouraging companies who are not planning to recruit on campus this fall to interview students using our videoconferencing capability.'
Despite the weakened economy, none of the Career Connection fairs received last-minute cancellations because of reduced hiring'the number of cancellations before Sept. 11 was slightly above or the same as previous years for all the events.
Patti Thompson, L&S special events coordinator, said she thought the L&S Career fair avoided having a large number of cancellations because most of the event's recruiters would not have to use air travel.
'I was just waiting for the onslaught of cancellations and it didn't happen. I was bracing myself and it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. We only had three cancellations,' she said. 'Most of the companies that come to our fair are regional recruiters from the Midwest. The three that I lost were the National Security Agency, the Chicago Police Department and a company from New York City.'
