by: Owen Gearren ’28

The Paper Industry Career Fair at NC State University is an annual event hosted by the Paper Science and Engineering program. This event is centered around networking and professional development, allowing students to grow their careers by speaking with company representatives, alumni, and other students about their future. The fair is open to other engineering students providing our corporate partners a variety of student disciplines to meet their needs. Every student in the program is expected to participate in the career fair for their own benefit. Companies have a wide range of opportunities, offering internships and co-ops and full time employment for students. Resumes are given out and if a student networks themselves well, they will be asked to sign up for an interview and potentially with a job lined up shortly after! Jobs are broad with companies, but students are known to pursue jobs most commonly in: manufacturing, research & development, supply chain, and consulting. Many different companies will be present at the fair to increase the chance of a student finding interest in a certain company and for the student to have multiple chances of finding a job and networking. Some of these companies include, but are not limited, to: Procter & Gamble, Smurfit Westrock, and Exxon Mobil.

Cori Sutton ’25, now representing her new employer, Nalco/Ecolab to current students.

This year, the career fair spanned three hours, giving students ample time to come and go working alongside class schedules. As for myself, I was able to talk to five companies in an hour and a half. My personal goal was to speak with companies I had not spoken to at previous events in much detail and to start narrowing options for a summer internship. Having a busy class schedule, signing up for direct interviews can be hard. This event allowed me to hand out my resume and set up interviews virtually. In addition to new connections, it is always good to revisit old ones, and I found myself catching up with people I met last year and speaking with the company I just worked for this past summer. I was also able to chat with students whom I had impacted before they even arrived on campus catching up with them and giving them advice. The career fair is an amazing opportunity for all students, as well as companies, to grow everyone in the process of finding a job, or for the company, expanding their cohort. The program had a great turnout this year and hopes to have just as great of a career fair next year! We relish having returning alumni for this event, their presence is a clear sign to current students of the value of the degree they are pursuing and the fruits of labor self-evident.