NYU Shanghai’s Spring Career Fair is a highlight for many students, where summer internships and first jobs can be lined up via face-to-face meetings and interviews with recruiters. With the COVID-19 epidemic shutting down the campus indefinitely, the Career Development Center (CDC) was forced to cancel the fair originally-scheduled for March 6. But the good news is that the 2020 Career Fair - as with so many other parts of university life - is moving online and transforming into a semester-long event.
From March 15 to May 31, the 2020 Spring Online Career Fair will be held via Handshake, an online career services platform connecting global and local employers with potential hires. CDC has already received positive feedback from world-renowned companies that have participated in the previous career fairs, including Huawei, PwC, Apple, HSBC, Deloitte, Unilever, and Jardines.
“Employers really appreciate any kind of online recruitment events and they are eager to meet students online,” said Season Yao, Manager of Employer Engagement and Strategy Outreach. “We have an expectation of 300 - 400 job positions from all companies, including full-time, part-time and summer internships.”
Instead of a one-day event, as it has been traditionally in the past, the Online Career Fair will last through the end of the semester. Students and employers, including those who are not based in Shanghai, are free to participate at any point.
“The average employer participation number for previous career fairs has been around 60, but for this year’s, we are aiming to bring over 100 employers, making it the largest scale career fair as well as the longest,” Yao added.
Yao also pointed out some of the challenges that now lie ahead. “Unlike usual career fairs where employers can interact with students face-to-face, the online form is not able to support live chat or video interviews at the current stage due to technical limitations,” she said. “But we are actively raising our requirements for Handshake and also reaching out to other vendors for functions mentioned above and will keep all stakeholders posted of any updates.”
Another notable change from past fairs is that NYU students from all three portal campuses: New York, Abu Dhabi, and Shanghai will be able to participate in the online career fair.
“All students who want to find a job in the greater China region can benefit,” said Yao. “In addition, there are a lot of NYU Shanghai students at study away sites this semester, so we wanted to make this fair accessible to them as well.”
To raise students' awareness about a career in non-profit and social impact areas and to offer students more career opportunities during the COVID-19 epidemic, CDC will launch its first-ever “NYU Shanghai Online Social Impact Opportunity Fair” at the beginning of April. This series aims to feature more employers from the non-profit sector.
Companies can attend the Online On-campus Recruitment program (virtual info session) to interact with NYU Shanghai students by contacting CDC. This program will be launched early next week.
With commencement fewer than 88 days away, CDC is standing by to help seniors in their job search. Seniors can get the most up-to-date information from the Weekly Hot Jobs post which includes job opportunities, recruitment trends, and industry reports. It can be checked through the NYU Shanghai WeChat enterprise account under the CDC channel every Thursday. Senior Special Walk In Time with CDC career coach will be held via Zoom every Tuesday and Thursday from 3:00 to 4:30 p.m. China Standard Time. ie.
A new series the 2020 Spring Distinguished Alumni Speaker Series will start mid-March via Zoom, which feature NYU Shanghai alumni discussing a variety of job search and career exploration topics. “During this special period, we will continue to offer assistance in preparing students’ career readiness, collaborating with employers and alumni to provide a wide range of information and opportunities, utilizing career development tools and systems to integrate online and offline resources,” said Guo Hao, Associate Director of CDC.
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Check out the NYU Shanghai 2020 Spring ONLINE Career Fair Invitation here.