With graduation only a semester and a half away for many UT students, the 2012 Fall Job Fair was the place to get a head start in preparing for the “real world.”

More than 160 companies were featured at the Thompson-Boling Arena on Sept. 25, with representatives for brands like Amazon, ExxonMobil, Knoxville Utilities Board, the Kroger Company and New York Life Insurance Co., all offering both full- and part-time jobs, salary positions, training programs and internships.

UT’s Career Services helped organize and manage the event. While not having exact numbers at the time, Russ Coughenour, director of Career Services, liked what he saw.

“The variety of employers and the number of employers is good,” Coughenour said. “We’ve had a good turnout. The turnout for this year is about 5 percent higher than last year.”

Since the economic downturn in 2008, Coughenour said that the job fair has not been able to get as many employers to participate. The all-time record for employer turnout was set in 2007 with 267 employers attending. The lowest turnoutyielded only 151 employers.

With the economy appearing to slowly but surely improve, Coughenour is hoping that employer confidence will increase and that the job fair will be able to “get back to that 250-range.”

Setting up the job fair was not an easy feat. Coughenour said that in order to prepare for the entire event, Career Services has had to make thousands of transactions starting back in June.

The list of tasks that Career Services has had to do includes advertising the fair to employers, getting them to register to participate, working out transportation to the fair and helping set up the multitude of booths.

Coughenour said that once the number of confirmed employers has reached “critical mass,” Career Services then begins to advertise the fair to students and put in the effort to get students to attend the fair.

“All of that takes quite a bit of advertising and communication and coordination and teamwork,” Coughenour said. “Often that’s missed in the equation.

“Everybody thinks that employers just appear and students just appear and everything is magic,” he added with a chuckle. “But it’s a little more difficult than that.”

Career Services’ efforts to get students to attend the fair were successful, as hundreds of them explored the booths in the arena.

One of those students was Devon Swanson, senior in marketing. While a bit nervous at first, Swanson said that navigating around the fair became an easier experience over time.

“It was kind of like those out-of-body experiences,” Swanson said. “But once you talk to the first booth it becomes a lot less nerve wracking.”

Part of Swanson’s strategy for keeping her cool during the fair’s proceedings was to prep her resume and pick specific companies to talk to.

“Honestly, I just printed my resumes, picked out a good outfit and kind of looked at my top choices and came in with a top six or seven,” Swanson said.

She recommended going to only 10 to 12 booths and then making a cut off in order to keep from being overwhelmed.

Jarrett Burgess, senior in logistics, also felt a little nervous when entering the job fair, being somewhat awestruck by the sheer number of both students and employers in attendance. But he, too, learned to abate his fear quickly.

“After I talked to one or two companies, it wasn’t that intimidating anymore,” Burgess said. “They would tell me about their company and what positions they had available. … You realize that you’re doing the same thing from here on out.”

Burgess hoped to find a job in warehousing or transportation, and already had one interview set up.

Katie Lutes, senior in chemical engineering, might have had some nervousness about the job fair, but she was still excited about the opportunities that could come out of it.

“It’s been pretty promising,” Lutes said. “I have a couple interviews for tomorrow and I’ve been able to get my resumes out to a bunch of different people.

“It could be that nothing comes out of it,” she added, “but I certainly have a promising outlook given that I have some interviews.”

Getting those interviews and hopefully landing a job after graduation is the goal of the job fair, and as far as Director Coughenour sees it, the job fair is always successful in doing so.

“This is an event that a lot of employers have on their radar screens,” Coughenour said. “They want to come to this event.

“Our students show well,” he added. “The University of Tennessee is a great brand. A brand that a lot of employers seek.”