What better place for a career fair to go high tech than one for IT-centric students?
Temple’s Fox School of Business and the Institute for Business and Information Technology hosted its first IT Career Fair on Wednesday and, in another first, business students with majors and minors related to information systems carried business cards with QR codes for recruiters, who were equipped with iPads to scan the codes and access students’ e-portfolios.
Also known as electronic resumes, e-portfolios allow students to manage their online identities and showcase experiences and sample work in a more dynamic format than a LinkedIn profile.
“We do a lot of career fairs and sometimes it’s tough to keep track of who you met, and this helps put a face to a resume,” said Paul Zaengle, vice president of U.S. Resource Management for global management and technology consultancy Liquidhub, one of nearly 20 recruiters at the event. “It’s my first time using e-portfolios at any career fair. It’s easy to use, and the iPad integrates some cool technology into the career fair.”
The e-portfolio initiative, overseen by the Institute for Business and Information Technology (IBIT), includes custom design elements and a search engine for employers to find students by relevant criteria. There are 1,023 e-portfolios in active use.
Before the career fair, the IT services arm of the Association for Information Systems (AIS) student organization led the creation of customized QR codes to link directly to each participating student’s e-portfolio and the distribution of business cards with the codes printed on the back. AIS members also trained employers in how to use the QR code reader on each iPad.
Management Information Systems major Yolandra Brown’s e-portfolio, combined with knowledge of WordPress, helped her land an internship last summer.
“My e-portfolio also helps remind me of everything I’ve done before speaking with employers,” said Brown, one of nearly 200 students registered for the career fair. “It gives me extra confidence.”
Eric Soll, a systems architect at Dow, said his Temple interns last summer supplied e- portfolio links on their applications, and recruiters found it to be a “much more powerful way to connect that goes beyond a simple resume.”
“It was especially interesting to be able to read papers the students wrote to get a better insight into their school work,” Soll added.
For Zaengle, using an iPad to access the e-portfolios gave him an easy way to bookmark leading candidates to review their material later. “I really am liking using this feature,” he said.
