Florida Polytechnic University hosted its Career and Internship Fair, Tuesday, Feb. 19, at its Innovation, Science, and Technology Building. More than 50 companies were on hand recruiting students for internships as well as career positions. The turnout of prospective employers set a new high for the annual event.
“We are extremely grateful to everyone who came out today,” said Dr. Kathryn Miller, vice provost for academic support services. “It demonstrates that companies throughout the region are placing an increasingly higher value on the quality of students Florida Poly is producing.”
Citi has already established a fruitful pipeline of Florida Poly students both for internships as well as full-time employment. Ann Shields, a recruiting lead for Citi in Tampa, said information security and big data are jobs in high demand.
“The quality at Florida Poly is exceptional,” said Shields, who also represented Citi at last year’s Career and Internship Fair. “We’re moving so many of our jobs from New York to Tampa, and we want to be able to show Citi we can get the technology knowledge and the education right here in Florida.”
Matthew Llarena, a junior from Pembroke Pines, Florida, majoring in computer engineering, said the event was very helpful and well organized.
“I’m mostly looking for an internship,” said Llarena. “I’m studying embedded system design and I’m looking for companies focused on computer engineering and, hopefully, with embedded system design.”
Another one of the company’s present was Dura-Cast Products, Inc., a plastics products manufacturer located in Lake Wales, Florida. Sean Cloud, who graduated from Florida Poly in 2018 with a mechanical engineering degree, is now a design engineer with Dura-Cast. He was sitting on the “other side of the table” for his employer at Tuesday’s career fair.
“It’s nice being able to help out students because I know how hard it was to find internships and how hard it was to do a lot of the stuff to get where I am now,” said Cloud. “Any way I can help try to get these students in the right direction would be more than satisfying for me.”
Some of the many companies and agencies also included NAVAIR, Motorola Solutions, SoarTech, Lakeland Regional Health, Verizon, and the City of Lakeland.
The annual Career and Internship Fair capped of a six-week program called CODES (Career Opportunities Developing Evolutionary Success), in which Florida Poly’s Office of Career Development held several workshops designed to help students with career development skills, including dressing professionally, marketing, personal branding, and networking.
Contact:
Lydia Guzman
Assistant Director of Communications
863-874-8450
