SCD 2006: Career Fairs Aren’t Just for Job-Seekers

While it’s the competitive events that make the Professional Landcare Network (PLANET) Student Career Days (SCD) unique, at the core of the event is the day-long career fair, which all students are encouraged – if not required – to attend. But while the career fair serves as a launch pad for many students in the landscape profession, the benefits to exhibiting companies and the industry overall can be just as powerful.

“This is a great chance for our industry to show students how much we’re growing and how many opportunities there are for them to succeed in all different kinds of positions,” says Todd Ferguson of Initial Tropical Plants, Riverwoods, Ill. “We’ve been coming to Student Career Days for 20 years and it gets better every year. Our company continues to grow as well, and it’s wonderful to see the interest coming from the students.”

Tegwyn Ellingson, also of Initial Tropical Plants, agrees and remembers when he participated in Student Career Days as a Brigham Young University student not long ago. “This is really the best day of the year,” he says. “What we see a lot is groups of students with traditional exterior landscape experience, many of whom don’t realize that part of our industry serves the interior market. I used to be part of that group and when I learned about interior landscaping and took an interior plant and design class I realized there was a whole new career path available to me.”

Opening students’ eyes to the wide array of professions within the green industry is a great benefit of the career fair, many exhibiting companies say. Ellingson and Ferguson say Initial has a number of sales, service, leadership and “concierge” positions available and will be able to leverage new studies on the importance of plants in the workplace to engage and educate students on the interiorscaping industry.

Meanwhile, some career fair exhibitors enlisted the help of young staff members in their SCD recruiting efforts. Casey Ridd, a Penn State student who graduates in May and has worked for AAA Landscape, Tucson, Ariz., for the past two years will continue working for them after college. Rather than scouring the career fair for interview opportunities, Ridd manned the AAA booth and answered questions for potential future coworkers. She’s on track to become a landscape maintenance foreman for the company and is a prime example of a young employee who found a new Career Path through SCD.

“I had been studying landscape design, but when I met and started working with AAA, I saw a lot of opportunity in the maintenance side,” she says. “I knew I wanted to work in the southwest, I really felt like I fit in with the company, and I’m looking forward to my new role. I think students that are at Student Career Days really have to have the heart to prove themselves once they find a joba nd start working, but they shouldn’t limit themselves to a certain type of job.”

Ridd adds that she’s happy to help AAA Landscape recruit new employees.

In addition to AAA, Initial and other companies that have brought in new talent from SCD for years, the 30th annual event welcomed a number of new companies to the career fair this year, as well. “This is our first year participating in the career fair and I can already tell that we’ll be here every year from now on if we can,” says Manuel DeSouza, ND Landscaping, Topsfield, Mass. “I didn’t have anything like this 20 years ago when I was looking for a job. There’s a really powerful energy here and it’s a great chance to show these students that are coming into the industry what we have to offer.”

DeSouza believes that the green industry has a better attitude than “corporate America” and hopes to use such differences to help ND Landscaping build its staff. “As the company has gotten bigger, we knew we needed to go after some new recruiting opportunities,” the company’s representatives say. “Last year, we sent our production manager down to the University of Maryland to check out how Student Career Days worked and we determined it would be a really valuable event for us. So far, we’ve had a great deal of interest from the students – we’re very glad we came.”

Another company relatively new to the world of SCD is Outside Unlimited, Hampstead, Md. Though 2006 is only the second year that the company has been involved, PR representative Stephanie Machrone says they’ve jumped in with both feet. “We chose to be a bronze sponsor of Student Career Days because we feel it’s a really great event overall and anything we can do to get our company name in front of the students is worthwhile,” she says.

An SCD bronze sponsorship includes a monetary commitment toward the event, but Machrone says it’s worth it. “You have to spend the money,” she says, noting that Outside Unlimited participates in as many career fairs as possible for recruiting. “We’re growing very quickly and the market is very competitive. We want to make impressions with as many students as we can show will help grow our business.” Machrone says Outside Unlimited picked up several interns at last year’s event and doesn’t intend to turn away talented students.

With students at all levels – from college freshmen to graduate students and even adult continuing education students – employers participating in the SCD career fair have many options when it comes to hiring. While most older students try to secure full-time employment for after graduation, many attendees are aiming for internships to gain experience. This type of short-term employment gives employers the extra hands they need during the spring and summer, and also provides an opportunity to educate young workers on their company culture, giving them a better idea of the industry’s professionalism and potentially enticing them to stay on as full-time staff members later on.

This year, nearly 100 companies participated in the career fair, which got rave reviews. For more information on how to participate in Career Fair 2007 during Student Career Days at Michigan State University, Lansing, Mich., contact PLANET at www.landcarenetwork.org, www.studentcareerdays.com, or 800/395-2522.