Next months' National Football League draft will feature 32 teams evaluating college athletes to play for their team. In the same respect, more than 60 companies came to the Student Union Ballroom to help Texas Tech students find a job.
"The turnout is great. We got a lot of students here, so it's an overall success," said Jay Killough, Career Center associate director.
At the career fair, the companies gave out applications and souvenir toys, all in an effort to recruit potential employees.
Tom Casey, Career Center associate director, said the job fair is a one-stop shop for students to find job opportunities and not wait until the last minute.
Casey also said he was impressed with the full turnout from the employers.
"As far as employees, it's been great," he said. "Students are starting to build up. The ones I've seen look sharp, and it's good."
On Monday, The Gallup Organization said Tech is one of the first few universities to have a strengths-based job fair.
"I think it's a new fair. We're the first ones to do that," Casey said. "(The fair is) one chance that they normally don't have. Most students don't have a chance. They haven't started to go ahead and find something."
At the Southwest Cheese exhibit, Christina Southern, a human resource general assistant, manned the table, where there were job applications and enough cheese-like stress foam to appease Green Bay Packer fans. Southwest Cheese was not the only table to have stress foam.
At the Academy Sports and Outdoors table, there was stress foam in the form of baseballs and fish, while George Ortiz was trying to find talent for full-time employment and for the summer.
"It's definitely a good-sized crowd. We're recruiting for summer internships and May graduates looking to go into retail management," said Ortiz, Academy Sports and Outdoors recruiter. "The pay-off is they have a great experience. I had three young ladies that were retail management majors. I didn't know they had a retail management program, which was a good surprise."
While some tables were sampling stress foam, representatives from Texas Instruments had drawings to give away money and a free iPod.
"That's definitely different (from other companies), and we're looking to give away internships for jobs," said Ed Mullins, Texas Instruments design manager.
Although Mullins was pleased with the turnout, he said he wanted to see more students from the electrical engineering department.
"It's a good crowd here, but there seems to be very few EE's," Mullins said.
Another company, Tech Star, was looking for people with skills in sales.
Rocky Sanders, Tech Star director of sales and operations, said he pleased was with the potential he saw from Tech students.
"The people (at the job fair) are very well spoken. They're very polished. They come here and know what they want," he said. "Obviously, Tech is a good school, and it reflects on the students here."
Jennifer Dudley, manager at Enterprise Rent-A-Car, agrees that the StrengthsQuest program gives students confidence they may not have had before.
"The students definitely seem more prepared," Dudley said. "They've taken the strengths-based program. That's given them direction."
While StrengthsQuest was the theme for the job fair, Killough said the five basic strengths were not required, but encouraged.
Although the job fair presented a win-win situation for employers and students, some did not believe there were enough companies there for their major.
"Personally, I wish there were more for business," said Megan Hall, a senior finance major from Houston. "A lot of it was 'all majors' and not opportunities to use your major."
Tony Bishara, a telecommunications major from Dallas, agrees.
"A lot of the companies in there we're mainly focused on sales and management," he said. "As a telecommunications major, there weren't a lot of telecommunications companies there."
Killough said he hopes to see a strengths-based career fair once every semester.
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