On Nov. 4, the Office of Career & Professional Development hosted eight employers for the Hospitality Career Exposition.

The eight companies were Ohio HIDTA, Omni Hotels & Resorts, Cedar Point, Giant Eagle Inc., Hilton Garden Inn Pittsburgh University Place, Piping Rock Club, Sheraton Erie Bayfront and White Lodging.

If students were interested in attending the expo, they could have registered in three ways. They could have stopped by the Career and Professional Development offices in Egan Hall to sign up for specific companies, registered for the expo on Handshake or registered for separate interview sessions on Handshake.

The event took place in the 24-hour lounge of the Center for Academic Engagement (CAE) from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. All the different employers had tables in the lounge and students were able to walk around at their leisure and were able to talk with as many employers as they wanted to.

“I really like the opportunity to talk about different job opportunities with a wide variety of companies,” said sophomore Hospitality Management and Culinary Arts major, Veronica Kibbe.

The location of this event is not only home to the Hospitality Management and Culinary Arts programs, but it is also the location of Cafe Diem, which is the student-run and operated cafe on campus. The students in the HM (Hospitality Manage-ment) and CA (Culinary Arts) programs have to work a set number of hours at the cafe to help them gain that real-world experience during their time in their undergraduate programs. The location of the event was a perfect segue for students to talk about the work they have done with Cafe Diem. The intention of the exposition was to help students find jobs.

Kibbe thought it was a successful event., “With summer internships already on my mind, I appreciated that the hospitality department took their time to set up this event in order to make my job hunting a little less stressful,” said Kibbe.

This year’s career expo looked a lot different than last year’s, and since that was Kibbe’s first year she had some thoughts about the way it was run.

“My favorite part was that it was in person this year. Last year, all the online job fairs felt more like another zoom to at-tend rather than actual help in finding a summer position,” said Kibbe.

While sometimes it may seem like we are through the worst of the pandemic, it is still very prevalent in our society and it is essential that students feel safe while trying to further their careers.

“I also liked the fact we were allowed to put different color star stickers on our name tags showing our comfort in physical contact. Green meant you were willing to shake hands, yellow stood for only an elbow bump, and red meant please no con-tact,” said Kibbe.

Overall, a lot of the HM students were pleased with the event. “It was all put together really well, and it seemed like every-one had at least one engaging conversation with a potential employer,” said Kibbe.

The event as a whole was met with a large turnout and was highly successful.

Junior Hospitality Management Major Kelly Lupton shared her thoughts as well.“This event was really helpful or me. I loved getting to talk with employers and they really helped me once again realize how excited I am about working in such a unique industry,” said Lupton.