Representatives from 45 different companies appeared at De Soto High School’s gymnasium for the district’s first ever career fair on Friday, March 30. At the informational booths they set up, the representatives were equipped with pamphlets, souvenirs and all of the career information that interested students might need.

Originally scheduled to be held on day February 22, the career fair had to be moved as a result of ice storms. However, the delay gave people like University of Kansas representative Emily Hoffman more time to prepare for the event.

“Basically, what I had to do is I looked at all the schools that were coming and tried to get a judgement of how many students were planning to attend,” Hoffman said. “Then, I gathered different materials based on what students wanted to know for the most part.”

Like Hoffman, counselor Chris Wallace also values what students want to know and thought that having a career fair would help expose students in the district to much needed information about various occupations.

“One of the goals of our accreditation process for the high school is to try and focus on areas of college and career readiness,” Wallace said. “As a district we felt that this was an area that we could improve on and really expand and explore our abilities.”

While all of the attending students sought information to help plan for their futures, they all required different levels of assistance. Some students had already narrowed down their interests by the time they attended. Among these students is junior Tyler Hilk.

“I just wanted to try and further my job application and see what [would] interest me in some of the companies that were already there,” Hilk said. “I also wanted to try and collect more information about how I could better fit into the career that I would like to have.”

Differently than Hilk, junior Will Anglemyer was unsure of what his next steps would be and attended the career fair hoping to figure them out.

“I realized that next year is my last year of high school, so I wanted to see what’s out there in the career field so that I can maybe work towards in college,” Anglemyer said.

After the career fair, Anglemyer had narrowed down his options a little more and says that the career fair would help other unsure students do the same.

“I think that this place would be great for anyone who doesn’t know what they want to do next,” Anglemyer said. “If you have no idea what you want to do in life, then come here and you will get ideas.”