By Kiera McMahon, education reporter
With the Virginia Tech career fair season upon us, students have opportunities to meet employers, explore internships and jobs and begin building professional relationships before the semester gets further underway. The fairs provide a chance to bring employers and students together, offering opportunities and experience for students at different stages of their college careers. For the team working in Career and Professional Development, this is one of the busiest times of the semester. According to Dr. Matthew Cowley, associate vice provost for Career and Professional Development, students can benefit from attending even if they are not yet looking for a full-time position.
“If you have the time, it’s a great thing to just go and shake some hands and network. I know that that may sound intimidating, but introducing yourself to folks who have hiring authority and asking them, ‘Hey, what do you all look for in an intern so that I can spend the next year getting ready and maybe having some of the experiences that the employers would say are valuable?’–that can be incredibly beneficial to a student,” Cowley said.
For students considering attending, Cowley recommends researching employers beforehand and developing a plan for the event. Most career fairs provide a list of participating employers, allowing students to learn about companies and positions they are recruiting for before arriving. Rather than asking recruiters basic questions, doing preliminary research can give students the opportunity to have more substantial conversations about what employers are looking for in potential employees.
The Career and Professional Development team also prepares students for career fairs, among other events, by helping them explore their interests and guiding them in looking for jobs, practicing for interviews, and networking with employers.
The timing of the fall career fair season can also give students a multitude of opportunities to refine their job-searching strategies. Students seeking summer internships have the fall fairs as an early opportunity to meet with recruiters, while the spring career fairs provide another chance to search if the first round does not result in an offer.
For graduating students, starting early can be particularly useful. Cowley said the job search can take months, making the fall an important time to identify weaknesses in resumes and interviewing skills and improve them in time for the spring semester. But Cowley knows that attending a career fair can be nerve-wracking for some students.
“I would say, you know, go with a friend. I wouldn’t hang on their side the entire time you’re at the event, but go with a friend who can help you process what’s happening and relax as you’re going through that process, that could be a really big thing,” Cowley advised.
Career fairs also offer something that online applications cannot: face-to-face interaction.
This was especially true at the 2026 Engineering Expo, where students filled Squires Student Center, prepared with tailored suits and resumes, before the event had even opened. The Engineering Expo, which is the largest student-run career fair at Virginia Tech, sees about 7,000 students every year. Kallie Allen, the 2026 Engineering Expo chair for the Student Engineers’ Council (SEC), said the event saw lines down Alumni Mall.
“So, this career fair is open to all engineering disciplines, and we also invite non-engineering majors to participate too. That includes students who are interested in switching to engineering, or maybe are interested in jobs outside of their major, and so, we’re very proud of the work we do,” Allen said.
Allen, a sophomore biomedical engineering student, has spent the summer working with companies, handling recruitment, logistics and outreach for the expo. Fourteen executive members of the SEC helped organize the event, which ran from Sept. 14 to 17.
The scale of the expo became more apparent as students moved between booths and recruiters met with hundreds of potential applicants each day. Allen said that one company reported speaking with approximately 800 students on the first day of the event. For Allen, the crowds show more than just the size of the event. The expo is intended to help students connect their education to expectations they will encounter in the professional world.
“We talk all the time at Virginia Tech about building your technical foundations, whether that’s in your classes, with workplace experiences, or with clubs or design teams, but they need a way to bridge that gap between the experiences that they have and what the industry is looking for,” Allen said.
According to Cowley, employers continue to look for many of the same competencies they sought when he was a student.
“When we talk to employers, unfailingly, these are the things that they’re looking for: They’re looking for good communication skills, whether it be written or verbal. They’re looking for somebody who can work on a team. They’re looking for somebody who shows evidence of having been a leader or having the potential to have to be a leader. They’re looking for somebody who can think critically,” Cowley said.
The only big change has been employers’ ability to discern which applicants truly possess those skills in the age of AI. With increasingly polished resumes and cover letters, employers are now looking for something more to differentiate applicants from each other. Cowley believes that this development makes career fairs even more important, as in-person interactions can leave a lasting impression on recruiters in ways that paper applications cannot.
For the fall semester, a variety of career fairs will take place through Oct. 20.
