(WACO, Texas) – For some companies represented at Texas State Technical College’s fall Industry Job Fair at the Waco campus, it was a first-time experience meeting students and alumni.
The event held Tuesday, Oct. 13, and Wednesday, Oct. 14, at the Murray Watson Jr. Student Recreation Center, attracted more than 1,630 students and alumni and more than 170 companies related to the college’s technical programs.
Hunter Henry, manager of employee relations in TSTC’s Career Services department, said the fall job fair is the largest event of its kind at the college. He said this year’s attendance shows the event is growing.
“That’s why it’s even more important for new companies to jump in as soon as possible because there are even more job seekers than ever,” he said. “It’s a great time to be a new partner of TSTC and it’s a great time to be a returning partner.”
Staff from Brazos Masonry Inc. in Waco chose to attend the event to tap into the community. Representatives were interested in meeting Building Construction students.
“We have had more people come by than I expected,” said Kelsie Bounds, the company’s executive vice president. “We’re just here looking for young talent in estimating and project management. We go to a lot of career fairs throughout the state, but we’ve never tapped into our local resources here, so we thought we’d come and give it a shot.”
Bounds said the company’s work has doubled in the last five years.
“We are trying to not only hire people, but trying to keep a pipeline going,” he said. “We are looking for interns so they can see if they like us and we can see if we like them.”
Staff from Kodiak Gas Services Inc. were interested in the Aircraft Airframe, Aircraft Powerplant, Diesel Equipment and Electrical Power and Controls programs. The company is based in The Woodlands and is a natural gas contract compression infrastructure operator with fleets in the Eagle Ford and Permian basins in Texas.
Taylor McKee, a company human resources assistant, received several resumes.
“They are all very interested in the benefits and stuff like that,” she said. “We have good tuition reimbursement and student loan reimbursement, so they’ve all been pretty interested in that.”
Riot Platforms Inc., a digital infrastructure company, specializes in operating large-scale data centers and bitcoin mining. The company has locations in Austin, Corsicana, Houston and Rockdale.
Company staff were looking for students in 13 of TSTC’s technical programs, including Business Management, Computer Networking and Systems Administration, and Welding.
“We are just trying to get our name out there, so we are trying to hit as many technical colleges around just where our data centers and operations are here in Central Texas,” said Leslie Vasquez, a senior recruiter for Riot Platforms.
Vasquez said the company will open internship opportunities soon, and has a lot of data center technician positions open.
“We are going to be opening up a handful of internship opportunities soon as well, so that’s kind of why we are hitting these, but we also have a lot of the data center technicians constantly open, so we wanted to at least start to build our name,” she said.
The Waco campus will have the spring Industry Job Fair next year.
For more information on Texas State Technical College, go to tstc.edu.