The Gottesman Boardroom at Stern College for Women buzzed with excitement on Feb. 11, 2020, as students and companies shared opportunities and information at the YU Career Center’s Tech Meet and Greet. Accenture, Amazon, Avanade, BlackRock, Broadridge Financial Solutions, CareCentrix, CitiBank, Ellucian, FDM Group, Google, JPMorgan Chase, Quantum Media Group and VMware Tanzu all set out swag and information and engaged in spirited conversations with the 75 students in the room, who were there to share their résumés, learn more about available tech-oriented employment and internships and get a sense of the companies’ goals, working cultures and missions.

Recruiters from Amazon meet with interested students

Susan Bauer, executive director of the Career Center, explained the genesis of the Meet and Greet. “The chairs of each computer science program, Judah Diament at Yeshiva College and Alan Broder at Stern College for Women, have been asking the Career Center to inaugurate a recruiting event for some time. In order for such an event to be efficacious, we wanted to bring together alumni from different companies who are collecting resumes for their respective HR departments as well as actual recruiters, mostly non-alumni, who are meeting students directly to fill their hiring needs.” The three of them felt that the growth of the two computer science departments coupled with the high post-graduation destination rates of their students warranted organizing the Meet and Greet. Bauer went on to explain that she invited non-alumni recruiters to attend “so that we could showcase new relationships between employers hiring YU students within companies where previously there was not a YU presence.” She was delighted “to see our soon-to-be graduates standing behind the tables side by side with the recruiters who extended them offers. This is the type of growth we are also making to service students in new areas where YU does not have an alumni presence and where my goal is to have one soon.” The students uniformly found the Meet and Greet a valuable experience. Daniela Esses ’20S, who is studying math and economics, was there to speak with BlackRock and Broadridge because “BlackRock’s asset management program is great, and Broadridge has an excellent internship program.” As a computer science major, Mori Schick ’20S is studying natural language processing, and while she had spent time this past summer with Citibank, she was there to see what opportunities were on show from the other companies. The company reps behind the tables were also pleased to be in the room. Maggie Musgrave, technical campus recruiter at Avanade, is very big on YU, having already hired three Stern College computer science seniors, who will be starting at the company after graduation: Rebecca Axelrod, Chaya Green and Aviva Shooman. The three will be working in Data and Solutions Engineering, and they soon expect to find themselves, as Green stated it, “in a whirlwind of learning and excitement.” Musgrave noted that “the students at Yeshiva University are well researched and inquisitive, which makes employers, like the ones in the room tonight, gravitate to their genuine motivation!  They embody professionalism.  It is a pleasure helping new graduates like this navigate momentous career decisions!” “The only word that comes to mind when I look back at this inaugural event is success,” said Barbara Lerman, employer relations specialist at the Career Center. “As the first event of its kind at YU, the Tech Meet and Greet successfully brought together technologically inclined students and 11 tech companies/divisions.” She noted that the event was a major effort by the Career Center to support recruitment for the many YU tech programs such as Computer Science, Business Intelligence and Marketing Analytics, Data Analytics and Visualization and Cybersecurity, to name a few, at an event solely focused on the technology industry. “In attendance were alumni professionals, recruiters and staff from YU’s Graduate Enrollment Management to introduce students to the various tech-based graduate programs. With this major success, the Career Center has been able to declare the Tech Meet and Greet a signature event and plans on making it an annual affair beginning in fall 2020.”