CHICAGO: The Indian American Community Services (IACS), a Chicagoland based no profit organization, continued its recently developed practice of aiding jobseekers throughout the country by organizing its fifth annual Mega Diversity Job Fair on October 28 at the Hilton Hotel in Chicago.
The event created quite a buzz, and provided opportunities to both companies and jobseekers. It attracted more than 1000 jobseekers and 50 companies from broad range of industries.
Job seekers came from several areas such as: Chicago, Michigan, Wisconsin and Indiana. Prakash, a job seeker who completed his undergraduation in IIT in Chennai India and is currently in second year MIS program at UIC, said, “I came to this job fair last year and ended up interning at CME Group during summer. This year, I see newer companies here. This event is a great source of opportunity for students”
IACS also provided free professional resume critiques and counseling sessions led by industry experts at the job fair. Parag Thakkar, a Senior Manager from Deloitte, was also in the team of industry experts that IACS assembled for free resume critique services. He mentioned, “This was a great service I have been part of. More than 400 job seekers in varied career fields both experienced and entry level candidates that attended this event benefited from this service.”
The Job fair attracted many large companies such as W.W. Grainger, ITW, L&T Infotech and L&T Technologies, Exelon, Allstate who were all corporate sponsors. In total, 50 companies participated in the job fair. Other large companies who attended include: Dover, AT&T, PNC, BP, Ulta, Chicago Tribune, and Rush University Medical Center.
Gigi Alfonso, who was coordinating the Grainger’s booth, stated that, “Grainger is always looking to hire diverse candidates with great talent and we are already in process of setting up interviews for the selected candidates from this Job fair.”
Griffin Goldin from Exelon said that “It was truly amazing to see so much diverse talent here from multiple ethnicities – this job fair provided great platform for Exelon”
Jagan Bukkaraju secretary of IACS said “Our team has been working throughout the year to bring in this Job Fair. It is truly satisfying to see that we were able to help people from all different backgrounds in the Chicago Tri-state area.”
Sreenivas Katragadda, president of the organization, said that as part of its ongoing efforts, IACS will introduce diversity job fairs in several cities over the next two years. It will conduct Diversity Job Fairs this year in Dallas and New York and the decision to expand the organization’s footprint is driven by the overwhelming demand for the range of community services offered by IACS.”
IACS is dedicated to empowering the South Asian community through a variety of events including: Woman’s conferences, Leadership Intern programs, professional and leadership networking, and Business and Entrepreneurial conferences.
Surendra Ullal