By Erica James
Staff Writer
Who better to advertise for a job fair then the very people who will attend it? On October 20, Dr. Robert Sadowski’s Advertising Principles and Practices class was split into four groups in competition to represent the Marywood University campaign for the 2008 Wacho via Arena Job Fair. The winning group from the class will then move on to a competition on November 20 where they will compete for the job against Keystone College, Kings College, Misericordia University, the University of Scranton and Wilkes University.
“I’m a big advocate for using the talent we have at Marywood. Why pay thousands and thousands of dollars to an ad agency when we have the talent right here?” said Christina Whitney, Northeast Pennsylvania Employment Consortium (NPEC) President and Assistant Director of Career Services at Marywood University.
NPEC is responsible for choosing the winning school who creates a campaign that will show students how beneficial the job fair is to their future careers. All individual offices for the schools will manage marketing for their campuses. To choose the winning school for the campaign, each school will appoint four representatives which will equal one vote.
Marywood sends out roughly 2,000 invitations to students and approximately 100 employers join the event to present information and opportunities. The event is in its seventh year. Whitney is looking to create a buzz about the fair around Marywood and the surrounding region. “Because it’s in Luzerne County I think more students around there attend but we’re hoping to change that with the student campaigns,” she said.
NPEC has been around for a little over a decade; the six schools have been working together for some time and became an offi cial consortium in 2000. Whitney was appointed first Assistant Director by the board before becoming president in July of 2008.
After the first contest on November 20, Dr. Sadowski’s winning group from class will then go to campaign in the final contest on December 12 against the other five schools. The team from Marywood will then compete against the five other schools in the consortium for the opportunity of a real campaign. For more information, check out www.npeccareer-success.org.