Career Center News
February in the Career Center
February 28, 2025
The month of our semesterly career fair always proves to be a busy one, and this February was no exception! In only 28 short days, we hosted 46 career events across campus, and over 250 employers interacted with us in some way. We were thrilled to see over 1300 students brave the cold to attend the Winter 2025 Career & Internship Fair on February 20th. If you’re curious about professional connections made in February 2025, let these numbers do the talking.
Engage
The Career Fair consistently proves to be an excellent opportunity for our students to find new job and internship positions, build their networking skills, and explore what they might want their professional future to look like.
This winter, over 200 employers attended our Career & Internship Fair on February 20. After arriving, they spent the early afternoon preparing for students to visit their booths; many recruiters brought cool swag items or set up elaborate displays to draw the attention of the job-seekers, and we can confirm - it worked! Over 70% of student attendees reported that they connected with more than five employers, and of that percentage, 22% spoke to more than ten! That’s certainly a successful recruitment session in our eyes. We look forward to continue building the GVSU Career Fair’s reputation as one of the premier events in the region to match employers with our outstanding students.
Connect
One of the many ways we keep our Lakers in the loop is through the Work Like a Laker Podcast: hosted by the Career Center’s very own Megan Riksen, Grace Joaquin, and Dani Lauer. Each episode delivers invaluable advice on all-things-career. We have seven seasons and counting of wisdom-packed episodes, with topics like exploring job fields, preparing for interviews, and finding Laker-tailored professional opportunities. However, we don’t come up with all of these on our own - YOU do!
Who better to be featured on a Grand Valley podcast than Grand Valley professors and former students? We frequently collaborate with faculty members and alumni to produce field-specific and expert-backed content for our listeners. Some recent highlights have been our interviews with Caitlin Horrocks to discuss careers in the publishing world, Dana Vaughn to gather insight into lab work, and alumnus Julie Quick to give advice on narrowing down career options. Our team is always looking to explore new and diverse career-centered topics, so be sure to keep the Work Like a Laker Podcast in mind if you’ve got knowledge to share with our listeners!
Discover
Looking for a way to support GVSU international students as they navigate the job search? FrogHire.ai has become a game-changing tool designed to make finding U.S. job opportunities easier for F-1 students. This program works as a browser extension that integrates with sites such as LinkedIn, Indeed, and Handshake. It automatically filters listings to highlight H-1B-friendly and E-Verify employers, helping students quickly find positions that are more likely to offer sponsorship. Plus, it has a built-in database of H-1B-sponsored jobs, making the search process even more efficient.
There is a large international student population at Grand Valley, so becoming familiar with the tailored resources available to this amazing group of Lakers is crucial to supporting their academic and professional successes. Here’s a few things you can do to make their job search a little less stressful and a lot more successful:
- Explore FrogHire.ai yourself to become familiar with its uses and best practices.
- Encourage students to research H-1B-friendly employers using FrogHire.ai to streamline their search process.
- Stay informed on visa and work authorization basics, like Optional Practical Training (OPT) and H-1B sponsorships, and visit GVSU’s International Student Services.
- Connect with the Career Center for more information on this topic and other great resources to share with students!