Stuffed duck makes a splash at college job fair
 Ad symbol attracts attention for insurance company, among vendors from around employment world at CSI

Staten Island Advance - Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Some potential employers dangled pens, and some candy; some stood in front of their booths, chatting as if at happy hour, and some stood behind them, beaming like cherubs. And one played the giant-stuffed-duck card.

The College of Staten Island hosted the 2006 Collegiate Job Fair yesterday, giving the student set a chance to present their assets and employers a chance to pull prospective employees into the workforce.

And if it took a talking duck, so be it.

“I take him everywhere – in the passenger seat, with a seat belt,” said Christopher Lyons, direct sales coordinator for Aflac insurance company, standing next to a stuffed duck the size of a beach ball.

The duck is a popular icon in the company’s marketing campaign, and just its presence made attendees quack “Aflac” under their breath as they walked by.

Vendors hailed from every which corner of the job world, from wax museum Madame Tussaud’s, to shopping mecca Macy’s, to government agencies such as U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Secret Service, to civil-service jobs including the FDNY, NYPD and park police.

At the NYPD table, cops in uniform talked about their work as if it consisted of receptions and social mixers.

“You’re out all day – you get to meet a lot of people,” one officer told a potential recruit.

While Staten Islanders enjoy the lowest unemployment rate (4.9 percent) in the city, according to the state Labor Department, there was no shortage of those seeking to drive down that number at yesterday’s event.

Early morning in the gymnasium, about 100 college students milled around visiting booths as though shopping for new shoes, stopping when their interest was piqued.

Some, like Shiju Varughese and Robert Kern, both of Sunnyside, took the task more seriously.

Dressed in suits, both stood off to the side with their list of vendors, making notations next to potential employers holding the most interest, the ones that were worth visiting anyway, and the ones that were looking for their kind of applicants.

“It’s hard to find entry-level positions, especially for recent grads,” said Kern, who has been unemployed since his 2005 graduation from Stony Brook University on Long Island.

Kern wants to work in mathematical research, and was hoping to walk through an open door at the fair. He, like many, thought he’d find it at the most unobtrusive table of them all – that of the FBI.

It offered no candy, no buttons, no colorful pamphlets or quacking plush dolls.

Yet it had the longest line.

That didn’t matter to William Mondesi of Brooklyn, who isn’t slated to graduate from St. Francis College until 2007; a computer science major, he found his forensic classes so interesting that he beelined for the law enforcement agency.

He said it was “just to see” what it would be like to work there, but his eyes twinkled at the concept of digging through hard drives for digital fingerprints for a living.
 

By MELISSA ANELLI
Reprinted here with permission from the