Tell a friend.
	Printer-friendly page

It may have been the south lawn adjacent to the Ryder Building and it may have been South Florida, but things looked decidedly southern California during this year’s BizFest, the College of Business Administration’s annual recruitment event for student organizations. Decorated tables staffed by representatives from all the college’s student organizations paid homage to Indiana Jones, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Money Talks, Pirates of the Caribbean, Wall Street, and The Castaway.

The Hollywood theme was the idea of Anezka Martinez-Rios, assistant to the associate dean of the Landon Undergraduate School of Business, with the consensus of the Business Student Council (BSC), to which all the student organizations belong and whose activities she helps guide.

Students compete for glory and prizes.

“Not only is BizFest a recruiting event, but also it included a competition that yielded a $400 prize for the winning organization to support its events,” said Martinez-Rios. “Each participating organization received up to $50 to decorate its tables, and the table presentations were part of its score.”

The other two components of the competition were a quiz show and a scavenger hunt. The game show tested students on areas outside of business.

“We had questions about history, geography, humanities, and, in keeping with our theme, on movies,” said José Toscano (BA ’97), former assistant director, Career Services, who also was the judge.

First place went to the Florida International University's Accounting Association (FIU-AA). The American Marketing Association came in second, winning certificates and goodies worth more than $100.

“The scavenger hunt was both physical and mental, with some trivia tossed in,” Toscano said. “Students had to find the names of all the presidents of the university; get a photograph of Clifford R. Perry, associate dean, Landon Undergraduate School of Business, who didn’t know they were coming; and find out about the original school’s logo—which only one team managed to do—along with lots of other challenges that occupied them for the allotted hour and ten minutes.”

“The most challenging task in the scavenger hunt was finding baseball field dirt,” said Walfrido Irizarri, vice president of FIU-AA. “We also had to look a lot of things up. It was a great bonding experience, and I really liked the teamwork atmosphere.”

Participants give two thumbs up for BizFest as recruiting event.

Irizarri, a senior majoring in accounting who hopes to get an internship in the fall and plans to apply to the college’s Master of Accounting (MACC) program, thought BizFest was a great recruitment success.

“About twenty or 25 students expressed interest at our table, ten came to the following FIU-AA meeting, and four joined,” he said. “A lot of people don’t know about the college’s student organizations, and this was a good way to get exposure for all of them.”

“We recruited ten or fifteen students,” said Beta Alpha Psi’s vice president of membership Beatriz Iduate, a senior accounting major, who plans to take the CPA Exam, get her graduate degree from the college, and work at a Big Four firm.

The Beta Alpha Psi table—with its Indiana Jones theme and which came in second—included a meeting invitation that Iduate baked in an oven for ten minutes to give it an appropriately singed look.

“It did work to attract people to our meeting,” she said.

Target lends financial support and gets to network.

For the second consecutive year, Target sponsored BizFest, helping underwrite some of the costs.

“We wanted to have direct interactions with students so we could dispel myths about retail and talk about opportunities in South Florida, all of which are executive-level opportunities,” said Jordan Sembler, Target group campus recruiter. “Five of us probably talked to fifty students, a number of whom came by the career fair shortly afterwards to get more information.”

BizFest took place on January 23, 2007, from 11:00 a.m.-3:00 p.m. Four hundred Chinese meals were served, and members of the cast of the campus theatre and dance department production of Something Funny Happened on the Way to the Forum, and the Dazzlers, performed.

For more information about the student organizations you can join, click on “Undergraduate Students” in the college’s current undergraduate students’  intranet site on the home page at: http://business.fiu.edu/.

Top of Page | Home

© 2007 FIU College of Business Administration