Recruiter labels Durham Career fair as “butters”

A Morgan Stanley recruiter has taken to Twitter to blast Durham and the DSU Careers Fair, labelling it “butters”.

Andy White, who according to his LinkedIn account is Graduate Recruitment Coordinator at Morgan Stanley, tweeted “(A)t a careers fair in durham, the place is about as northern and butters as you can imagine”.

Opinionated. Mr White studied at Manchester Met

Tuesday and Wednesday saw the annual Careers’ Fair take place at the DSU, with 83 organisations running stalls to promote 2013 graduate and internship schemes.

For nervous finalists facing up to the prospect of graduate life, and keen first and second years wanting to get ahead, this should have provided a welcome opportunity to meet exhibitors, and gain both further information about companies and application tips.

However a poor attendance, perhaps due to a lack of awareness, was left further disappointed by a perceived lack of organisation to the event, with no apparent logic to the grouping of companies by sector over three floors of the DSU.

One 3rd year on Tuesday commented that “the whole event seems to be set up like a Fresher’s Fair, a taster session, which just doesn’t work for employment fairs. I came here to see four firms in the same business sector, but their stalls aren’t even near one another, it’s taken me twice as long to get around”.

This seemed to encourage students to wander around aimlessly picking up goody-bags and freebies, rather than approaching both afternoons with focused preparation on companies of interest.

In interests of fairness to the University’s Career Centre, the two days were marketed as an “Employer Information Event”, and so an even spread of firms and sectors might be justifiable. However, other exhibitioners as well as White indicated that the current system wasn’t working as hoped.

One, who wished to remain anonymous, remarked to The Tab that “what makes this kind of event worthwhile for us is genuine interest from prospective applicants who have done their research, who know where they want to go. We find that many students come with questions that could easily be answered by looking at our website. At other universities more students use these events to talk about specifics of their applications”.

Considering the value placed by the University on the Careers Advisory Service, and the fact that Durham has one of the leading graduate employment rates in the country, it seems a shame that our flagship Careers Fair is viewed by both students and employers in a negative light.

If the University can sort out this churned up mess perhaps White will be tweeting about “the cream” at next year’s event.