Addie Echols
Meet the Firms happens once a year, the first Thursday after Labor Day; business students may meet future employers and hand out their resumes.Through Meet the Firms many students have gotten successful internships and some even receive job offers for after graduation.
Brian Harrington, executive director for the Center of Professional Experience (CPE), promotes Meet the Firms to students and prepares them by reviewing resumes, taking headshots and holding mock interviews.
“There’s really good opportunities for students to find internships,” Harrington said. “I would say out of all the fairs we host the biggest success rate is going to be Meet the Firms because accounting hiring is different from the rest of campus. Accounting firms hire a year in advance compared to other employers.”
Companies such as Walmart, Forvis and JB Hunt come yearly to find potential interns. Many of the recruiters are Harding alumni hoping to find interns similar to themselves, further improving Harding’s relationship with these companies. Tucker Steed, senior accounting major, recently finished a summer internship at Walmart in Bentonville, Arkansas.
“My experience with Meet the Firms, it was definitely intimidating at first, but the CPE does a great job of kind of preparing you with information sessions and all the organizational stuff with getting your resume for employers on the back end and name tags and things like that,” Steed said. “So it made it easy to walk into there and feel at least somewhat prepared for your conversations with those employers.”
Senior accounting and accelerated masters of information systems major Ann Clayton Fox completed her summer internship at HoganTaylor in Little Rock, Arkansas. Last fall Fox applied before Meet the Firms and later met the employer face-to-face, leading to her internship offer and a job offer after graduation. Fox and Steed were both recently on a panel where they discussed their internships to other students who may be interested.
“We talked about why we were looking for what we were looking for, how Meet the Firms benefited us, and for me, Meet the Firms benefited me from getting face-time with my future employer,” Fox said.
