Senior picnic offers students career opportunities
On Wednesday, Sept. 6, the Career Center hosted its Senior Picnic on Front Campus with a line stretching all the way to Parks Hall. Seniors were offered a free hot dog, T-shirt and the opportunity to network with 19 different companies.
Julia Richardson- Students line up on Front Campus for the Career Center Senior Picnic. The line stretched as far back as Parks Hall.
“We had over 400 students come out,” said Sarah Schanck, job development consultant for the Career Center. “We were very pleased with how the picnic turned out.”
Schanck says it is important for seniors to go to events like the Senior Picnic to get a jump-start on their future careers.
“The job search can sometimes be a six to nine month process, so it’s a good idea to start thinking early,” Schanck said. “We wanted the picnic to be a good jump-start to the year for the seniors.”
GEICO and Waffle House were two of the companies represented at the picnic.
“We typically target business majors for leadership positions at GEICO, but we consider people from all majors,” said Madie Martin, business administration for GEICO offices in Macon.
GEICO’s largest regional office is located in Macon and has about 4,500 associates.
“Our office handles 15 states,” Martin said.
GEICO even had their infamous gecko present at the picnic to encourage students to consider applying to the company.
“We are looking for people for supervise leadership roles, emerging leaders and sales service claims,” Martin said. “We have seen a lot of interested students.”
Christopher Parrott and Asa Lambert, representatives for Waffle House, were present at the Senior Picnic. Waffle House was offering a starting salary of $47,000 to college graduates.
“We gave out all our promotional information before the first hour was over,” Lambert said.
Lambert, an alumnus of GC, has been working at corporate Waffle House for three years.
“We are interested in all majors,” Lambert said. “We want people who start and finish things, and having a good personality doesn’t hurt either.”
The Georgia location of corporate Waffle House is in Norcross, and they are recruiting college graduates.
“Waffle House is offering the highest salary of any other company here,” Parrott said. “We are looking to hire for manager trainees.”
Parrott has also been with Waffle House for three years and has worked his way up to corporate working in human resource management.
“Our business is growing,” Parrott said. “People love Waffle House.”
All of the companies presented some incentive to stop and talk to the representatives. GEICO offered magnets and Waffle House gave away free coupons.
“We had a great group of employers that love to hire GC students,” Schanck said. “We put events on the Career Center website and emailed our employer database to encourage companies to come. Others heard about the picnic and contacted me.”
“I loved all the job tents and found them all informative,” said Michael Heuett, senior marketing major. “The picnic was really helpful to my job search.”
GC has over 1,000 seniors this year, and many are looking to get a job after graduation as opposed to venturing on to graduate school.
“The seniors need to start looking now,” Schanck said. “They need to be getting their resume ready and start building relationships with employers. That was the Career Center’s main goal of the picnic.”
Posted by Julia Richardson
on Sep 15 2011. Filed under News.
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