In preparation for the upcoming career fair, this week we were asked to present our elevator speeches. For those of you that are not familiar with an elevator speech, it is a pitch you would give to a potential employer to market yourself for a job. At first when hearing about the task and what I had to do, I was very nervous. Standing in front of a group of people and talking about myself is not something that I am very comfortable with. Thinking about what I would say in my pitch was the hardest part.  I want to say something that makes me stand out from the other candidates. As an athlete, the first words that came to mind were leadership and good communication skills. Obviously, these are very common adjectives to describe yourself with, but with the pointers my professor was able to give, we were all able to come up with ways to help our speeches stand out.  In my speech, I talked about my previous and current experiences that will help me in my future and my passion for marketing.

After giving my elevator speech I feel more confident for the career fair and how I will be presenting myself. I think learning how to develop an elevator speech is very useful, and I am excited PDS has taught me how to prepare for future jobs. Most importantly, the career and internship fair.

There was a lot of preparation going into the career and internship fair. For the past two weeks my PDS class has been reviewing all the ways to be successful during the fair. Mainly my professor focused on how to present yourself and what to say to the recruiter to make yourself look good. What you had to wear was the most important in my opinion. The first impression is always the lasting one, so if I was not dressed in business attire I feel that it would have changed the outcome completely.

The career fair was very nerve racking at first but after I introduced myself to the first company the nerves started to go away. There were a lot of businesses that I found to be very interesting and by being a marketing major I could relate to most of them there. The companies that I mainly wanted to focus on were the sports companies like the New England Revolution and the United States Tennis Association.

I was able to have a great conversation with the recruiter from the New England Revolution where I was able to give my resume to him. Unfortunately, there were no open positions for an internship but the recruiter said that he would hold my resume for future reference. I did have better luck with the United States Tennis Association, where the recruiter said that there was an opening in the marketing department. I am excited to learn about whether the opportunity is still available. After sending out a follow up email, the recruiter said that she would be keeping in touch.

PDS helped me prepare for the fair so much and allowed me to be ready for the questions I would be asked along with allowing me to get rid of the nerves. I was able to go up to them and start a conversation about their business and about myself without a problem. Overall, it was a very successful event, and I was happy with the turnout of companies and the number of students that decided to attend.