Blockbuster Career Fair Returns This Fall

This fall, public health students are thinking ahead.

Kelyn Zhang, an MPH candidate in Sociomedical Sciences, is planning to apply for jobs in health communications, education, marketing, or health strategy. Her long-term goal is to work in the area of health education for marginalized communities and chronic disease management.

Her classmate, Yve Francois, also MPH candidate in Sociomedical Sciences, has narrowed her job search to community-based organizations and non-profits, with the option of going to medical school and training as an OBGYN. Eventually, she’d like to lead a city health department.

Both are attending this Friday’s Columbia Mailman Career Fair.

Offered exclusively to Columbia Mailman students and alumni, the Career Fair is a unique opportunity to meet with recruiters and explore job and internship opportunities with employer organizations representing a broad range of sectors and career paths.

Nearly 90 employers are participating in the event organized by the Office of Careers and Practice’s Career Services team, including global health employers like Doctors Without Borders and UNICEF who don’t often recruit at career fairs. They are joined by community-based organizations, advocacy nonprofits, and government agencies (the Great Plains Tribal Leaders' Health Board and the California Department of Health, for example) who might not have attended past fairs due to travel costs. Also on hand will be leading consulting groups, research institutes, environmental organizations, and tech companies, joining career fair standbys like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

“There’s truly something for everyone!” Heather Krasna, assistant dean of Career Services, enthuses. “Even if you aren’t job-seeking, our fair is a chance to connect with employers and learn about careers. If you are first-year, you can use the event as a chance to get advice about the skills you need to build for the future, too.”

Career Services hosts three of these fairs every year: large career fairs in the fall and spring, as well as an Administrative Fellowship Fair in September. They also organize dozens of individual employer presentations and recruitment events, alumni panels, mixers, and other events, while also offering individual career counseling and networking resources.

Friday’s Career Fair is the fifth to take place online. The first took place at the end of March 2020, less than two weeks after the start of lockdown, and served double-duty as a COVID-19 volunteer response recruitment event. The Career Services team used their expertise in online fairs to help the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health (ASPPH) launch their first online career fair in around a decade; it has since become an annual, national event.

Krasna says she is hopeful for a face-to-face event this coming spring but plans to keep an online fair whatever happens. “This way we have the best of both worlds—face-to-face fairs when it is safe to do so, but in a small setting with limited capacity, primarily for organizations based in New York City—combined with online fairs which make the event the most accessible for our employers, students, and alumni who are spread out around the world,” she says.

Throughout the afternoon virtual fair, participating students and alumni will meet with recruiters via Mailman CareerLink, a job database and career management platform. A number of these recruiters are also Columbia Mailman alumni.

One of these alumni recruiters, Patrick Georgia, MPH ‘13, is representing health care analytics company Komodo Health, where he works as a customer success manager. He isn’t the only Mailman grad at the company; other alums work on managing client relationships, and leading strategy and marketing. In scheduled conversations with more than 50 current students, he will be looking for candidates with an analytical mindset who know how to collaborate.

Not surprisingly, Georgia, who is also a member of the Alumni Board, says a Columbia Mailman education provides just the right kind of training needed to succeed at the company.

“Mailman students are provided with deep insight into the ever-evolving health care landscape, which is very applicable to the arena Komodo operates in,” he says. “Mailman students are also hard-working collaborative thinkers who are focused on providing solutions to pressing health care issues of today, which aligns directly to Komodo’s mission of alleviating the burden of disease.”