How to Engineer Annual Recruiting Wins for 400+ Employers and 12,000 Students During a Two-day Event

The Purdue Engineering Student Council (PESC) offers "Meetings" from Career Fair Plus (CF+) because their employers demand it as a way to discover their ideal candidates among 12,000 students attending the PESC Industrial Round Table.

With Meetings, pre-qualified candidates get to have 1:1 time with their highest priority employers maximizing the effectiveness of the career fair for candidates and employers. Employers can choose how many meetings and what qualifications they want as filters for candidates booking meetings.

PESC shares three Pro Tips to maximize success when you enable CF+ Meetings:

According to a 2022 College Gazette ranking, the agriculture and biological engineering program at Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN, is #1 in the nation, and their industrial engineering program is #2.

If you’re assuming these metrics lead to high post-graduation placement rates, you’re right: 97% of 2021 Purdue engineering graduates successfully transitioned into a career or graduate school within six months of commencement. The Purdue Engineering Student Council (PESC) is a major force behind these numbers.

Founded in 1975, the PESC fulfils its mission statement of “serving students, serving industry, serving community” on campus and around the globe. PESC members represent almost every engineering discipline offered at the school and are some of Purdue’s most enthusiastic and motivated leaders.

As President of the Purdue Engineering Student Council (PESC), senior Electrical Engineering student Ben Pekarek oversees Purdue University’s two largest career fairs, the Fall Industrial Round Table (IR) and Spring EXPO.

The IR attracts 400+ employers and 9,000-12,000 students focused on internship, co-op, and full-time positions in STEM, engineering, and related disciplines. PESC’s two-day spring career fair attracts 200+ employers and 5,000 of Purdue’s globally sought-after engineering students.

When the IR returned to an in-person event in 2022, PESC, employers, and students wanted to continue the well-liked and productive reserved 1:1 meetings facilitated by the virtual format. But, with a potential 12,000 attendees, PESC also needed to ensure employers met qualified students for each open role and internship.

Similarly, the PESC leadership wanted to bring back popular pre-2020 IR in-person offerings, including employer informational webinars the day before IR opened.

As full-time engineering students also searching for internships and employment, PESC planning teams needed robust administrative tools to optimize the hundreds of behind-the-scenes labor hours required to create meaningful connections between 400+ employers.

Meetings, with a capital "M", minimized the administrative challenges of offering 1:1 reserved meetings forward to the post-pandemic Industrial Round Table career fairs.

Hosting Software PESC enhanced the CF+ software they already used by enabling the value add-on feature, Meetings. This functionality for in-person events allows employers to pre-identify students according to relevant filters attached to published meeting schedules and students to “skip the lines” by booking meetings on applicable published schedules.

IR employers who purchased the $150 value add-on to their base registration gained the instant ability to attract pre-qualified intern and employee candidates from the 9,000-12,000 student participants. Many who registered for Meetings also selected a second $150 a la carte option to host an information seminar one day before the IR.

Meetings lets employers publish as many schedules as they choose, each with pre-set timed segments for 1:1 meetings with students who meet optional prerequisites attached to each schedule. The company-selected filters block students who don’t match the criteria from reserving meetings.

Because company representatives get these students' resumes before the IR, maximizing the value of this initial meeting—and optimizing their recruiting and hiring efforts at an event with 399+ competing employers and more than 9,000 students.

The available schedule slots are typically ten minutes, although employers can increase or decrease the meeting times and the buffer period between students.

Engineers love numbers, so let’s share the results in their language, starting with the $42,300 in additional revenue to help fund PESC-sponsored scholarships because:

IR 2022 enjoyed a 60% average fill rate on published meeting schedules across the two-day in-person event.

You don’t need to host a career fair, welcoming 400+ employers and 9,000-12,000 students to benefit from Pekarek’s insights about using CF+ Meetings and bringing 1:1 reserved conversations to your in-person events.