THE LOYOLA Schools Office of Placement and Career Services (LSOPCS) launched the first paperless career and practicum fair in the country. It was held from January 21 to 24 on the Red Brick Road.
Entitled “Paperless Career Fair 2014,” the event aimed at exposing students to different career options through on-campus recruitment efforts.
This year, however, the LSOPCS decided to make the annual fair paperless to aid in the preservation of the environment and to maximize the use of current technology, said LSOPCS Student Deputies President Kelsey Go.
With the new system, students who wished to apply for an internship or job only needed to upload their resumes into the LSOPCS website and get their identification cards (IDs) scanned at the booths of the companies they wanted to apply for during the fair.
The Development Sector Job and Practicum Fair, held from January 20 to 21, signaled the start of the weeklong event. 30 organizations comprising the corporate social responsibility arms of corporations, government offices and nongovernmental organizations participated.
Meanwhile, a total of 90 companies from the corporate sector were given the chance to conduct their recruitment efforts from January 22 to 24.
Jumpstart: A Study Abroad Fair, co-organized by the Ateneo Student Exchange Council, was held in the Loyola Schools Promenade from January 22 to 24 as well.
Conceptualization and preparation
According to Go, the LSOPCS began preparing for the fair in October of last year.
LSOPCS Director Carla Siojo said the idea of the paperless career fair was brought up by Globe Regional Marketing Manager Rase Eustaquio. Globe Telecom has been the main presenter of the career fair for two years now.
“Initially, when we met with Globe, the concept was to ask to students to compete in creating the system,” said LSOPCS Career Counselor Florence Ladion.
After consultation with the Office of Management Information Systems, the Registrar’s Office and the Information Technology Resource Management Office, the LSOPCS concluded that leaving the software development to a student group was too risky because they had other commitments such as academics.
Zeaple Incorporated, an information technology service provider, was hired to develop the system that was used for the career fair.
Community response
The change in the career fair’s format was met with appreciation by both the participating companies and majority of the students.
“When I first heard about it (the paperless career fair) and read the [system user] manual, [I found it] very cool. This is very efficient, very easy and practical also for us,” said ABS-CBN Films Human Resources Assistant Leizel Avila.
Development studies junior Lawrence Malasa said that even the development sector fair was good because the number of participating companies from the sector were almost as many as those from the corporate sector.
However, management information systems junior Francis Bautista said that though he did not have any difficulties with the new system, the level of convenience and ease it provided was not ideal.
“It (the system) was so convenient that I think it was counterproductive to the goal of the fair. The ‘scan-all’ trend caused little [or] none communication between the booth staff and the student[s],” he said.
During the fair, many of the participating students no longer asked the company representatives about career prospects. With the speed of the fair’s new process, it became easy for students to just have their IDs scanned at every booth.
Concerns and problems
Despite the generally positive feedback, however, the career fair still experienced a few problems with regard to sending the student account verification codes.
Several Ateneans complained that they did not receive their verification codes via email. These codes were necessary for students to create an account in the LSOPCS website and upload their résumés.
LSOPCS Career Counselor Ladion clarified that there are three reasons that some students did not receive their verification codes on time: They just returned from their junior term abroad (JTA), they were graduate students or their email accounts had problems.
In response, the LSOPCS asked Zeaple to program new features for the system that allowed the office to create accounts for JTA and graduate students. The new program features also allowed the LSOPCS to input the new email addresses of the students with problematic email accounts.
Meanwhile, students were also worried because they thought their résumés would not be properly uploaded onto the system.
According to Ladion, the prompt saying that the account creation process was completed was already the verification that the students’ résumés were successfully uploaded.
According to her, when student have their IDs scanned in the company booths, the computer screens also displayed whether their résumés were uploaded or not.
Ladion added that in order to safeguard the LSOPCS’ databases, participating companies were only allowed to access résumés and student information within campus from 9 AM to 5 PM.
