For students on a standard job track, job fairs are plentiful. But for entrepreneurs, job fairs have been virtually nonexistent — until Feb. 21, when the Fox School’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Institute held its first fair for entrepreneurship majors, minors, and members of Temple’s Entrepreneurial Students Association, which is open to students of any major.

Twenty-five companies from the greater Philadelphia Region filled the Speakman Hall lounge looking for eager students to fill a variety of entrepreneurial positions.

For the 80 students who registered, the fair was an opportunity for seniors to go on the job market, and for underclassmen to scope out learning opportunities.

“Coming here increased opportunities ten-fold,” said Mark Peters (Fox ’08), president of the Entrepreneurial Student Association. “It’s a great chance to meet the right people.”

The companies taking part were generally early-stage companies in a wide range of industries, and included Swapagift.com, Eastern Business Software, Freshout, Prometrics and Timberlane.

Kristen Byers of Brandywine Mergers and Acquisitions, an advising firm for entrepreneurial companies, was looking for students to join Brandywine’s intern development program. “Sometimes it’s hard to find the right people, so it’s great that everyone there already had an interest in entrepreneurship,” she said.

According to Chris Pavlides, executive director of the IEI, interest in reaching these students was strong: Organizers had to turn companies away for lack of space. Temple’s rankings as a top entrepreneurship school by Entrepreneur Magazine and Princeton-Review (8th undergraduate and 12th graduate) and by many other ranking entities in the United States makes Temple prime for entrepreneurial recruiting.

“Everyone wins,” said Jaine Lucas, director of the IEI. “Entrepreneurial firms are looking for highly skilled business generalists who can function across many business disciplines, working closely with management to move the company forward. That’s exactly who our entrepreneurship students are and the experience they’re seeking.”

Connecting specific kinds of businesses with these students through an entrepreneurship job fair is so important, according to Fox School Vice Dean Raj Chandran. “Typically, entrepreneurial students are looking for a certain type of company. They stay away from big companies that make them feel like small fish in a big pond, but are attracted to companies where they can be big fish in a small pond. These students want to see the immediate effects of their work.”

According to Pavlides, another reason for the strong turnout is that Temple’s is one of the first job fairs targeted at entrepreneurship students in the United States. “We want to give students an opportunity to have a learning experience before they start their own business,” said Pavlides. “They need guidance before they can branch out on their own.”

“This was a great idea,” said Sophomore Nina Wong. “Big job fairs are for specific areas like finance or marketing. Entrepreneurship majors dabble in everything, and that is what these companies are looking for.”

— Written by Ann E. Acri

For the Fox School of Business