Ayres Looking to Hire Smart at Career Fairs

Spring is approaching, and for many companies, this is prime time for recruiting soon-to-be graduates for open positions and to line up students for summer jobs or internships.

Members of Ayres’ Florida staff recently spent time meeting with students at the University of Florida in Gainesville as part of the University’s Career Showcase Spring 2015.

Other Ayres Associates staff members recently attended career fairs at the University of South Florida in Tampa and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. In the fall Ayres will check out the prospects at career fairs at Michigan Technological University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the University of Wisconsin-Platteville.

Rick Maslyn answers questions from a University of Florida student.

We encourage students to start attending career fairs during their freshman year to gain experience speaking with prospective employers and to get positioned for an internship. Ayres tends to hire entry-level staff who have had relevant internships or co-op positions, whether with Ayres or another firm.

Amanda Inman of our Madison, Wisconsin, highway design staff landed her job at Ayres in 2011 after visiting with Jamie every single year of her college career at UW-Madison. While various factors got in the way of her landing an Ayres internship, her visits with Jamie confirmed for Amanda that Ayres would be a perfect fit for her personality. Those chats with Jamie also put her in position to land a full-time job with Ayres not long after graduating.

“Going early to the fairs, if nothing else, gets you comfortable with the process and knowing what to expect later on,” Amanda says. “It gets you comfortable with the companies out there, and gets them comfortable with you. Even just knowing the organization of it all and what to wear was helpful. The fairs are also where a lot of companies do interviews. … Jump on this opportunity because it’s so hard to stand out on a sheet of paper.”

For more information about pursuing a career, internship, or summer position at Ayres, please contact Danielle Kretz.