14,000 Turn Out as Engineering Students Sprint for Shrinking Jobs

Roughly 14,000 people attended the Society of Women Engineers' conference in Boston, and about 40% of them were college students racing for a shot at a shrinking pool of jobs.

Videos of the crowds have gone viral. One TikToker captioned footage of the mad dash to enter the career fair: "Thank god I'm employed." The fair ran three days and ended Saturday, offering panels and networking alongside the recruiter booths.

Isabella Wong, a 20-year-old biochemistry student at Simmons University, skipped the rope-drop rush but still stood shoulder-to-shoulder with prospective engineers fighting for face time with hirers. When she finally reached a booth, the recruiter pointed her to a QR code.

"I think it's very indicative of people being determined to get their foot in the door," Wong said.

How bad is the market for new graduates?

The Federal Reserve puts underemployment among recent graduates at 42.5%. That number explains the swarms at the rope drop. For many young job seekers, career fairs offer a way to become more than a faceless résumé in an Indeed portal.

"These students are going to get jobs wherever they can," said Jennifer Scott, SWE's chief growth officer. "We try to keep them from using their elbows and crawling over each other."

Scott estimated attendance at around 14,000. The conference has drawn more before — over 20,000 attendees at one point, a figure she called "too many." What's changed in recent years, she said, is attitude.

There are fewer jobs available, and some companies have shut down early-career hiring, Scott said. There are also fewer fairs, as some recruiters stop visiting college campuses. The Grace Hopper Celebration, another women-focused engineering conference, canceled its event this year.

What are students doing to cope?

Isabel Amaya, a 21-year-old informatics student at the University of Washington, felt lucky she didn't need to "fight it out" at this year's Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers conference. She already had a return offer and attended mainly to network.

She saw desperation around her. Some friends had given up on early-career roles, switching industries or hunting internships instead. Others delayed graduation to stay eligible for internship programs, she said.

Wong noticed the same pattern. Most people she spoke with were chasing internships; entry-level jobs seemed out of reach.

"The current job market is looking for more experience than what we have as college students," Wong said.

Does the strategy actually pay off?

There's a reason the crowds line up. Amaya landed her internship-turned-offer at last year's SHPE conference. This year, her friends picked up offers from Bank of America and Bloomberg, she said.

Allan Morales, a sophomore studying chemical engineering at the University of Michigan, had less luck — most recruiters he met were only interested in juniors. But he knew someone who secured an offer at the conference from Micron. That candidate had competing offers and interviews lined up before the event. "He was stacked," Morales lamented.

The fairs are built for hiring. Some companies solicit and review résumés in advance. Many run interviews in private booths on-site.

Jocelyne Suerte, a 21-year-old mechanical engineering student at the University of Houston, works the system deliberately. She identifies which companies are interviewing on-site, then approaches only their booths.

Suerte attended both SHPE and SWE. At SHPE, attendees lined up at 4:30 a.m. to rush the booths, she said. At SWE, shoddy WiFi blocked her from loading the venue map, so she roamed the halls hunting for the companies she'd picked out.

It worked. Suerte said she received offers from both conferences and is still weighing which one to accept. For students who plan their booth visits and arrive before dawn, the chaos can still convert into a signed offer.