MAPS Career Fair builds relationships between students, employers

The Marketing and Professional Selling (MAPS) Career Fair will take place from 4 to 6 p.m. Thursday, bringing in around 60 employers to meet with students and alumni on Baylor’s campus.

The event will take place at the Meyer Conference Center in the Paul L. Foster Campus for Business and Innovation and will be open to all Baylor students and alumni—regardless of major, Executive Director for the Center for Professional Selling Dr. Andrea Dixon said.

“It’s a place for a student to build his or her network or further advance their understanding of what those roles look like,” Dixon said.

Dixon said it is important for students of all majors to take advantage of the MAPS Career Fair because sales is one of the top five places students go into after graduation.

Glassdoor, a popular job and recruiting website, lists sales associate as the number one most popular job for college graduates. While the top major for the position is listed as business, other top majors include English and political science.

Students from across the whole breadth of arts and sciences are likely to begin their career in a sales type of a role, Dixon said.

“It’s not uncommon for students—for example, in theater or majoring in speech or journalism and so forth, to find that the education they’ve acquired here at Baylor helps them with that communication process—Which is an important part of the sales process,” Dixon said.

In the past, employers have enjoyed seeing a variety in student profiles and have commented on the unique chance to explain their career opportunities to students with different majors, Dixon said.

In the past, around 250 to 300 students have attended the MAPS Career Fair which, according to Dixon, makes it a great opportunity because it is a more intimate setting and allows the student to showcase him or herself better.

Thailand junior Chad Brown has been attending the MAPS Career Fair since he was a freshman.

“Even though you might not be interested in working for their company, there’s a saying ‘it’s not about the grades you make, but the hands you shake’ so just putting yourself out there and meeting as many people as you can is definitely beneficial,” Brown said.

Baylor’s business school has built a relationship with the participating companies over time, Dixon said.

Every year, students in the Professional Selling Program do a prospecting exercise where each student in the class connects with ten companies to build their relationship with Baylor.

“Our students work with Career and Professional Development in the course of one of their classes in the business school to actually build out Baylor’s footprint across a number of companies,” Dixon said.

Brown, who participates in the Professional Selling Program, said the relationships students in the program build with various companies are great because they are then able to form connections between those companies and the university.

“The companies keep coming back because they like what Baylor has to offer,” Brown said. “A lot of students that they see coming from Baylor to their companies are meeting and excelling their expectations.”

The companies participating in the upcoming MAPS Career Fair include Reynolds & Reynolds Company, AT&T, United Parcel Service (UPS) and more. Students and alumni can find a full list of participating companies on the career fair website.

The Center for Professional Selling hosts this event twice a year. After Thursday’s fair, students and alumni will have to wait until the Fall 2018 semester to participate in another MAPS Career Fair.