College of Education’s Career Fair One of Biggest, Best - May 21, 2009

Despite national economic woes and sobering unemployment figures, future teachers attending the University of Texas at Austin teacher career fair had reason to be optimistic.

This year’s fair drew 268 recruiters from around the nation and over 600 job seekers.

According to the College of Education career services office, a primary reason the career fair is one of the largest in the state because it’s open to the public. It is available to anyone who is looking for a job as school administrator, teacher, counselor or librarian.

“The fact that we don’t limit attendance to University of Texas at Austin students is one reason this fair is so successful,” said Rita Moreno, program coordinator in the College of Education’s career services office. “The College of Education also requires more field experience hours of our students than many other universities, so recruiters know that they will have access to the cream of the crop.”

The College of Education hosts two teacher career fairs each year. Each daylong event is structured such that job seekers can do research, meet district recruiters and drop off résumés in the morning. The afternoon is devoted to interviews with recruiters.

Although University of Texas at Austin teacher education students and graduates who attend may be a little bit nervous, they’re very well-prepared for the task at hand. The College of Education’s career services office provides several hours of training in how to prepare a résumé, how to present oneself professionally in interviews and how to fashion winning answers to recruiters’ questions. A library of employment-related materials also is at students’ disposal.

Each year the career services office adds a new feature or refines an already-existing resource that makes the job search easier for future teachers. Technology has allowed students to prepare online portfolios for districts to view and present video clips of themselves teaching in a classroom, for example.

Noticing that the large workshops held each semester to teach résumé-writing and interview skills were a bit too impersonal, the career services office decided to do away with large group meetings and set up small workshops in which students would get much more personalized information and attention. The more intimate meetings have proven to be much more popular with students.

“Students are required to go to one of these small group meetings the semester before their apprentice teaching semester,” said Moreno, “and they get very specific, very relevant information at the workshops. For example, someone speaks to a cohort of bilingual education students about additional fees they will have to pay for tests that are necessary to teach in their area.

“Recruiters who speak at these workshops share questions that are being asked now in interviews and give the students some extremely valuable insights. This spring we even decided to invite someone from Round Rock ISD’s human resources office to co-conduct the workshops. Getting the human resources perspective is so valuable to the students. These workshops are held in the evenings, and the students come from a very long day of apprentice teaching and are tired, but they just light up and transform when they hear
Dr. Pat Lyons speak. She’s an incredibly gifted motivator and speaker.”

In most cases, the students are hearing some of the same information that’s already been shared by career services. As Moreno says, though, it’s like the difference between your mom telling you to eat your vegetables and your football coach telling you to eat your vegetables.

“In career services, we tell the students to make sure their voicemail message is very professional sounding, for example,” said Moreno, “and that they either remove or clean up their profiles on Facebook, MySpace and so forth – just to be mindful of how they present themselves through social media and on the Internet. They may listen to me when it comes to these things, but they definitely listen up when a recruiter tells them to do it and shares anecdotes and horror stories of teachers who made mistakes in this regard. The students take it very seriously.”

In addition to instructive workshops that are open to anyone who plans on attending the career fair, a recruiter job panel right before the career fair allows students to ask the recruiters questions about what the districts are seeking and to network in a casual, small-group setting.

“We’ve had such success with these recruiter panels,” said Moreno. “We include a mix of small and large school districts and invite recruiters from all over the state. The students who attend are exposed to multiple perspectives, and it really gives them a leg up as they seek employment. This year, for example, Elgin ISD gave the students samples of questions that they ask ESL teacher candidates. We have groups made up of future art teachers, music teachers, social studies teachers – it’s been a major improvement to make these gatherings much more targeted.

“Before the job fair, we also invite one of the recruiting districts to present a mock interview for the students and show them how things look when an interview goes well. Last year, Spring Branch ISD was responsible for presenting the mock interview, and they took it one step farther by also presenting a mock bad interview. The students loved that they showed what not to do as well as what works – this is a very, very popular event with the students before the fair.”

Moreno noted that this year’s fair was a bit different from past years in that more students showed interest in taking jobs outside the Austin area. There were also more alumni job seekers who were certified and had been in non-teaching careers but were interested in returning to teaching.

“”We heard some people express that they wanted to get back into teaching because it’s a ‘safe place,’ to be right now,” said Moreno.

When asked about career services changes that students might encounter next year, Moreno noted that the office hopes to update and enrich the Web site this summer.  Features that the office plans to add include a video clip of a good, polished 60-second introduction that would be appropriate to use with recruiters, interactive forums where students could share experiences and photos of past job fairs, and a blog.

“We’re constantly watching and listening and looking for ways to do all of this better,” said Moreno. “The students have a lot of support in their job search and things are going to get even better. If you listen to feedback from the students, you can learn so much – they are, indeed, good teachers.”

—Kay Randall, University Communications, 512-232-3910

Related Sites:

• Career Services Office