Goodbye Fall 2022!

As we enter the waning days for Fall 2022, the Career Services team would like to take a moment reflect on the past semester.  With a return to in-person career fairs and campus events, it felt much more like pre-pandemic life.  Going into the semester, we were unsure if employers would return to campus given lingering concerns about Covid and the huge increase in remote work since 2020.  We were thrilled (and honestly a little surprised!) when our in-person fairs were actually more popular than our virtual fairs with employers and student attendance matched pre-pandemic levels.  We also saw more in-person advising appointments with students and opened our interviewing facility for employers to conduct in-person interviews with students.

Still, we realize that the pandemic brought many changes with it that are here to stay.  While some employers preferred conducting their interviews on campus, many appreciated the flexibility that video interviews allowed.  And while some employers opted to conduct in-person information sessions just for Penn students, the ability for employers to conduct multi-school information sessions via Zoom made MANY more employers and industries accessible to Penn students.  It is clear that a hybrid operational model is here to stay for the future and we in Career Services intend to capitalize on this structure to bring as many opportunities to Penn students as possible.

What does this mean for Spring 2023?  We will be hosting a mix of in-person and virtual career fairs (you can see the list here) and expect to have a robust assortment of employer information sessions available which students can find on Handshake or the events feed on our website.  We will also continue to offer in person and remote advising appointments and interview schedules with employers. Stay tuned for updates in January.

In the meantime, best wishes to all Penn students on finals and for a relaxing and enjoyable semester break. See you in 2023!

By Barbara Hewitt
Barbara Hewitt Executive Director