Startup Jobs Fair Connects NJIT Students to Local Entrepreneurs
NJIT's Entrepreneur Society hosts an annual startup job fair, providing students with the opportunity to pursue careers and meet directly with the founders of new local companies.
Hundreds of students attend, many looking for the perfect match, while others were there to network or learn about the startup experience from the dozens of companies present.
Aravindakshan Sarma, studying for an M.S. in information systems, said he's looking for a full-time job and prefers working at a startup rather than a large company.
"I'm trying to see if I fit somewhere … Probably as a data analyst or business analyst," he said. "I can learn many things compared to big companies. Maybe they might ask me to lead a team." He might be interested in finding an aviation company, as his boyhood dream was to become a pilot.
One of the startup founders, Marissa Beatty, is a chemical engineer whose company Turnover Labs aims to reduce pollution. "Our company builds devices that help retrofit chemical manufacturing plants to recycle their emissions from CO2 back into chemicals, on-site," she explained. She was looking to hire other chemical engineers and also MBA students.
"We're helping them, they're helping us, so it's a really nice environment," said society president Sydney Watson, a third-year student in a B.S./M.S. program for business and web systems, who organized the event. She noted the presence of timely companies, such as artificial intelligence startup Embr Systems, which uses AI in its customer relationship management application.
For students who are shy about attending job fairs, "My advice is to make the most of the opportunity and take advantage of the environment. It definitely is a casual kind of space. Practice your elevator pitch. These are startups, they're smaller companies, it's not like they're huge corporations yet, so they're not expecting you to be perfect. So come make the most of it," Watson observed.
Watson, who desires a career in digital product management, was pleased with everyone's enthusiasm this year after the inaugural event in 2022 happened as the region was still emerging from the pandemic. She said next year's edition of the startup fair will probably need a bigger venue if it keeps growing, such as the university Wellness and Events Center. She knows the building well, as a star defender on the Highlander women's soccer team.
The next event for Entrepreneur Society students is to visit startups and venture capital firms in New York. That trip is organized by the club's faculty advisor, Will Lutz, who directs NJIT's VentureLink incubator. "Will has been super instrumental. His engagement is super and it's really nice to have him as part of the club," Watson said. In 2022, New Jersey Institute of Technology overall was ranked the best public university for entrepreneurship in the Northeast, by The Princeton Review and Money Magazine.
Entrepreneurship doesn't have to mean you want to start a company. It can be a general attitude toward hard work. "You can be entrepreneurially minded and maybe not ready to take that next step to start a company yet. But that doesn't mean you don't have great ideas or don't want to be around people with great ideas," she noted.
In the office or on the soccer field, she believes, "Life is a game of mistakes. Whoever makes the least mistakes or can manage their mistakes, wins."
