More than 1,000 NIU students are expected to invade the Convocation Center on Wednesday for the annual job fair – but how many will actually find a job?

Unfortunately, there aren’t specific statistics available about student success at NIU’s biannual fair.

“If we wanted to spend a whole bunch of money, we could operate a bureaucracy that would track everybody down and find out,” said Jean Callary, an assistant director for the Career Planning and Placement Center (CPPC). “But, it would be very expensive, and it wouldn’t really change the way we do things.”

There will be 123 employers at this year’s fair.

“I think that says something very positive about the job market, especially for college graduates,” she said. “If the employers weren’t happy with what they were getting here, they wouldn’t be back.”

The university has become a drawing pool for the 17 companies that have attended 20 or more of NIU’s job fairs.

“We have a solid corps of employers who depend on Northern for their entry-level college hires,” Callary said. “A new college graduate is smart, ready to work and usually is the cheapest one on the totem pole with a college degree.”

Even when companies lay employees off, they still have to replace them. Entry-level graduates should look confidently at the job market because there’s plenty of replacement going on at this point in the marketplace, she said.

Employer attendance at job fairs has dropped off in recent years. After nine consecutive job fairs from 1996 to 2000 had at least 200 employers, there was a significant drop. The fall 2001 fair had 131 employers, the spring 2002 fair had a dismal 93 employers – the lowest since spring 1993 – and the fall 2002 fair had 125.

Callary compared the services the CPPC offers to that of University Health Service. She used the example of a student with a headache who will visit the health center and come away with two aspirin.

“[The health center] has no way of knowing that they cured that headache, but they know they provided you a service,” she said. “So they hope that maybe next time you have a headache, or in our case, maybe next time you need a job, we’re here for you forever.”