The Beaux Arts Ballroom at Bemidji State University was bustling with opportunity today.

“The number one way that employers hire, they say, is through a job and internship fair. So, it’s a great resource to pair different students and majors, along with employers and companies,” says Molly Aitken-Julin, assistant director of career service at BSU.

“What’s great about being at BSU is we really have an opportunity to see students with a diverse background in all kind of diverse majors, and so we’re really excited to see what all those individuals can bring to the table,” says Gretchen Knutson, associate vice president with Delta Dental.

This year’s spring job and internship fair reached max capacity. More than 200 BSU and NTC students took part.

“We’ve got 85 employers. It’s definitely a variety of employers looking to hire part-time and full-time jobs and internships, summer, volunteer positions,” says Aitken-Julin.

Delta Dental is looking to fill more than 150 positions in the Bemidji area. They were able to get a few interviews set up already thanks to the career fair.

“We will be hiring various roles. In the near term we’re looking for supervisory roles, some trainers and some quality assurance individuals to start over the summer, and then this fall we’re going to be looking for some customer service roles,” says Knutson.

The job and internship fair put a big emphasis on networking. For example, they were even given the opportunity to take a new LinkedIn profile picture so that way, they could take their new professional relationships digital.

“I’m going back in there to network a little, but it was really great just to have everyone in the same area. It was easy to just walk around and get a lot of different companies and all their information really fast,” says Anna Knowles, a junior at BSU.

For students who missed the fair, BSU and NTC made is easy for them to reconnect. They’ve started a new service on their app.

“We have our employer-student connection we use, it’s called “Connect2Careers”, and we use a vendor called “Hand Shake”, and the students can access that through their MyBSU or MyNTC portal,” says Lisa Gubrud, officer manager and recruitment coordinator of career services at BSU.

Bemidji will have a community wide hiring event on April 11^th at the Sanford Center. It starts at 4:30. All job seekers are encouraged to attend.

By — Shirelle Moore