DeKALB – NIU held its STEM/IT fair for the various students pursuing majors in these fields. The IT/STEM Fair provided the opportunity for students to connect with potential employers.
From 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday in the Duke Ellington Ballroom, NIU held its STEM/IT fair.
Its purpose is to provide an opportunity for students, alum and community members to connect with employers for potential recruitment, according to the NIU events calendar.
The fair had many employers attending, including 21CS, Friendly Consultants Inc. and the DeKalb County Government.
Bill Loikets, a support manager at Broadcom, said they decided to appear at the fair to hire people to work on mainframes. A mainframe is a large supercomputer many people use at the same time, according to the Cambridge dictionary.
“We’re looking to hire mainframe talent and NIU is a great school for mainframe,” Loikets said. “They have a lot of good classes here, some little language, COBOL, JCL, so it’s a great place to hire.”
Broadcom is a company focusing on “…technology leadership and category-leading semiconductor and infrastructure software solutions,” according to its website.
Loikets explained Broadcom is looking to hire interns who are computer science majors close to their last year and vitality residents who will learn the mainframe via Broadcom, be trained on their products and then be put onto a customer site where they can polish their mainframe skills and get hired by one of their customers.
Kara Murphy, a junior statistics and applied mathematics major, said she attended because she is interested in the many opportunities available and found it easier to create connections in person, rather than on websites like Indeed.
“Besides Indeed and other websites like that, it’s fairly difficult to find a job,” Murphy said. “So I’m hoping to find some connections here.”
The next career fair is the All-Majors Internship and Job Fair, which takes place from 1 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Oct. 2 in the Convocation Center.
Cyril Silario, a junior electrical engineering major, gave some advice for students planning to go to a job fair.
“I say, dress nice, look confident. They’re always looking for that great confidence when you’re trying to get a look into a career,” Silario said.
