Society (DevSoc), in partnership with the Development Studies (DS) Program and the Ateneo Placement Office (APO) held the school’s first Development Sector Job and Internship Fair last February 3 at the Leong Hall Roofdeck.

Aimed to provide knowledge and career opportunities to students interested in the development sector, the three-hour event featured different representatives from several government, non-government and development research organizations.

With the initial intention of helping DS majors land internship and job opportunities, DevSoc President Jed Elroy Rendor said that the fair had been part of the organization’s goal projects since April 2011.

Upon consultation with DevSoc moderator and DS Program Director Leland Dela Cruz, however, the goals of the job and internship fair covered a greater scope.

“I encouraged them to expand beyond our students to include the rest of the university,” Dela Cruz said. “Having an event like this [will not only give students] more information about possible career opportunities in [the] development [sector], but at the same time, the organizations coming in [will] be able to recruit students because they don’t have many opportunities to do so.”

Currently, the APO pegs around 90% of Ateneo graduates as working in the corporate sector. According to APO Director Carla Siojo, around 209 students attended the fair, along with students from the University of the Philippines, Miriam College and De La Salle University.

Although the development sector fair was the first of its kind, a similar fair was held by APO in 2006. “In 2006 and 2007, the Office of Placement organized a Non-Government (NGO) Fair aside from the annual Job and Practicum Fair.  Due to the low turnout, the NGO Fair was discontinued. In the succeeding years, the development sector organizations were invited to participate in the annual Job and Practicum Fair of the Office of Placement,” Siojo said.

Planning and execution

DevSoc started planning for the fair last October and began its execution a month after. “There were some difficulties [that we encountered] in organizing and synchronizing contact information with the DS program since we do not want to overlap with what the department offers,” Rendor said. The DS program already has several contacts because DS majors are required to have an internship.

A number of the participating organizations were personal contacts of Dela Cruz or are currently employing Ateneo graduates. “We asked all our contacts if they were interested to join, and most of them were. We then identified some organizations who hired or accepted interns on a regular basis,” Dela Cruz said. They also consulted contacts from APO.

Rendor added that the participating organizations were chosen based on their compliance with a requirement: a one-page form detailing the number of job or internship opportunities that they offer and the representatives they will be sending.

Promotions for the fair were done online. Announcements were also made via the Ateneo Blue Board. “I got in touch with my friends in the theology and philosophy departments [who are] faculty members, and I asked them to promote it. The placement office also promoted it through their placement representatives,” said Dela Cruz.

Improvements for next year

The organizers said they were satisfied with how the fair turned out. Dela Cruz said that they have met their objectives and were satisfied with the number of participating organizations, as well as the number of students who attended the event.

He added that the participating organizations were also satisfied with the turn-out. Aside from job opportunities, the event also allowed students to know what the organizations were actually doing. “Not many people know about the activities of the [organizations like] Jollibee Foundation or the Globe CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) Team. The students deliberately went to each table and asked, quite frankly, ‘What do you do?’ [They were] very upfront,” he said.

“I think our development sector job fair worked because it was only for three hours. So the plan next year might be [to hold it during] the same week [as the APO Job Fair] but with the same arrangement: a separate venue and for only a limited amount of time,” Dela Cruz added. He also said that they are hoping to collaborate with more organizations next year, including the Ateneo Economics Association, The Assembly and the Management Engineering Association.

Rendor is hoping for the continuity of the job and internship fair. “Given the partnership, there weren’t a lot of constraints in implementing it. It was actually easy. We just had to be patient in contacting [participating organizations],” he said.

To prepare for next year, Rendor said that they plan to conduct a survey on students’ career choices, which would reflect on the organizers’ choice of participating organizations during the fair.

European studies senior Kay Gemzon, who is also taking a Minor in Development Management, is hoping that the development sector job and internship fair will become an annual event. “I think it is fantastic that the organizers put this up because it addressed some of the students’ interests, particularly with development,” she said.