Conventional employment interviews come face-to-face with the latest computer technology when Mississippi State University holds its first Virtual Jobs Fair for graduating students.
Organized by the Career Services Center, the Nov. 18-22 teleconference will enable students to interview with businesses and organizations around the country without leaving campus. While new in this region, the concept has been proved elsewhere.
"As employers looked for ways to make university interviewing more cost-effective, videoconferencing has emerged as a very useful tool," said center associate director Robert E. Wolverton Jr.
Thirty-six Mississippi State participants will communicate via a computer system called VIEWnet. In addition to allowing both parties to simultaneously see and talk with each other, the computers will display resumes and related documents, Wolverton said.
About 20 national organizations, ranging from Andersen Consulting to International Business Machines to Sears, will be involved in this inaugural effort.
Interested students earlier signed up at the center's offices in the Colvard Union. After reviewing job descriptions provided by the organizations, they chose the ones for which they wished to interview and arranged specific interview dates and times.
"To familiarize themselves with the VIEWnet equipment, students selected by the organizations for interviews were required to attend a training session," Wolverton explained.
The addition of computer-aided interviewing doesn't mean long-established career service programs--"career days," on-campus interviews and resume referrals--will be discarded anytime soon, he said.
"Videoconferencing simply provides yet another way to bring Mississippi State students and their potential employers together," Wolverton said.
For additional information on the Virtual Jobs Fair, telephone (601) 325-3344.