David Varquez, a masters student in aerospace engineering meets with a representative of B/E Aerospace during the Engineering Career Fair in the McKimmon Center on Wednesday. The event marked a record turnout with more than 4,000 students and 373 employers in attendance." />
Banu Ganeshan.
David Varquez, a masters student in aerospace engineering meets with a representative of B/E Aerospace during the Engineering Career Fair in the McKimmon Center on Wednesday. The event marked a record turnout with more than 4,000 students and 373 employers in attendance.
A record 373 employers set up displays in effort to attract the most desirable graduates to their companies at the biannual engineering career fair Tuesday and Wednesday at the McKimmon Center, according to The News & Observer.
About 4,000 job-seekers attended what has come to be one of the largest career fairs in the nation, which emphasizes the increasing demand for highly-qualified engineering candidates in the technology job market across the country.
Although many of the attendees were students or recent grads in their early 20s, candidates of all ages attended the fair, some of whom traveled hundreds of miles to put their faces and resumes in front of top employers from all across the county.
Big-name companies that sought potential employees at the career fair included Apple, Microsoft, Boeing, Facebook, Volvo, as well as hundreds of others.
Companies that do not solely rely on engineers fuction but require engineers for some aspects of the company were also present, including Allstate Insurance, Bank of America, Bloomberg, CarMax, Credit Suisse, Humana, National Security Agency and Nimble Storage, among others, The N&O reported.
The engineering career fair began in 1998 as an annual, one-day event that attracted about 60 employers to NC State, and the fair has been experiencing steady growth since its inception.
The demand and employment rates are currently high for engineers, and high-paying jobs are plentiful in the engineering field. In 2011, NC State’s spring survey found that 31 percent of engineering graduates had accepted a full-time position before graduating. Now, about 50 percent of NC State engineering students are consistently reporting the same thing.
A new engineering graduate can see an entry-level starting salary as high as $100,000 a year in the petroleum industry, and most other types of engineers can expect to see a starting salary of at least $60,000 a year, the N&O reported.