Students came to the job fair to meet potential new employers during the Job and Internship fair Thursday in the Grand Ballroom of the Martin Luther King Jr. Union.

Essence Chatman, a senior public relations major, said she attended the job fair because this is her last year at Eastern.

“I’m graduating in May so I wanted to see if they had any internships related to public relations in jobs,” she said.

Senior psychology major Pleasant Singleton said he attended the job fair because he also is leaving Eastern soon.

“I’ll be graduating in December and I need to get a job by the time I walk the stage, that’s my goal,” he said.

Singleton said he knows a lot of people who have gotten jobs from coming to the job fair in the past.

“That’s one of the main reasons why I come, just so I can possibly be one of those people by the time I graduate,” he said.

Jimmy Smith, a senior sales counter executive at Schneider National, said freshmen should come out to the job fair because they could meet and gain knowledge from many of the businesses.

“It doesn’t hurt, I mean (freshmen are) very young, (they) may not know if (they are) going to stick to this major or if (they are) going to change majors, but I’m not going to tell people not to come because you never know what opportunities you can get,” he said. “Not a lot of (businesses) offer stuff to freshman, but it’s never a bad thing to network.”

Jeff Leichty, the accounting manager for Caterpillar Inc., said more freshmen should come to the job fair to get familiar with it.

“I think that even if you don’t know what your major is, I think that it’s beneficial to attend, to come see it, to walk around to kind of understand what it’s about and get some of those first time jitters out of the way,” he said. “(Then) when you do have your career picked, you are a little more seasoned when you are here as a junior/senior.”

Jelan Buchanan can be reached at 581-2812 or at jjbuchanan@eiu.edu.