A huge thanks to everyone who attended and supported the two-day Autumn Careers and Placements Fair last week.
This year, we combined forces with the Placement teams to invite a greater range of contacts and ensure the largest number employers possible. We then implemented our new marketing and social media plan and enlisted our student ambassadors, to maximise promotion of the event on campus!
There were 247 stands over the two days (223 unique exhibitors) – Thursday was all disciplines and industries, whilst Friday was for STEM specialists – which makes the Fair one of the largest for the UK HE sector. The event drew in record numbers of students too; never had we seen attendance of over 3000 students in a single day before, but this year we exceeded that number on BOTH days. At one point, we even had to discuss capacity and whether to start restricting the number of students entering!
For the first time we did not have a printed guide, saving many thousands of sheets of paper. The App which held the Fair guide was visited more than 20,000 times by those who downloaded it and there were 50,000 company views – we’ll leave you guessing who was the most popular!
As well as the improved guest list, and utilising the App, other tweaks to the format included huge TV screens around the room displaying important information for students, and the introduction of water coolers rather than distributing hundreds of plastic bottles of water.
Anecdotally, employers were impressed by how well-prepared our students were; they had clearly done their research and planned their visits, which is great feedback. We are now completing the clear up, finalising the admin and circulating the evaluations! Thank you to colleagues who have already emailed us their feedback.
We want to thank everyone who supported us; the STV staff, security and parking, porters and electricians, Fresh, AV, Careers Service and Placements colleagues (and anyone we may have missed!).
The Employer Services Team
(Catherine, Victoria and Emma)
Respond
