Courtesy of UCSB Entrepreneurs Association

The Entrepreneurs Association (EA) is hosting the first ever Startup Symposium Career Fair on May 4 from 1-4 p.m. in Corwin Pavilion.

The event, sponsored by UCSB’s Associated Students, is free and open to all students and alumni. Santa Barbara startups will be hiring for job positions and internships within sales, marketing, business development, engineering, human resources and more.

The UCSB EA President Navjot Brar, fourth-year mechanical engineering major, said the organization expects 500 people to attend throughout the day. After speaking with a previous president of the Cal Poly Entrepreneurs Club, Brar thought a career fair could help UCSB students as well.

“The Startup Career Fair was just a perfect way to help students … After talking to multiple startups in town, they all voiced their concern that they needed to hire UCSB students. That got me thinking, ‘Well that’s weird, I know a ton of students looking for jobs at UCSB,’” Brar said in an email.

According to Brar, EA “created some hurdles” to ensure that companies will engage with students for immediate hiring rather than simply increase the reach of their company.

“I always hated going to other career fairs and hearing the big companies tell me to just apply online. These guys want to hire UCSB students immediately and for the summer,” Brar said.

Currently there are 15 Santa Barbara companies attending: Procore, Appfolio, Invoca, LogicMonitor, Graphiq, BioIQ, cielo24, Aurrion, Impact Radius, Brazyn Life, TrackR, Oniracom, FluidStance, PayJunction and Bitwage.

Jiana Vargem, EA outreach officer and third-year psychology major, is in the process of completing the Technology Management Program certificate. Vargem will be volunteering as an EA member at the fair but said she will also use the event as an opportunity to network.

“In January EA put on a Startup competition that is going to become an annual event so I cannot see why this wouldn’t,” Vargem said in an email. “We all are stressing out about graduating and employment, so why not maximize our opportunities for future hire?”

Josh Barney, Chief Operating Officer for the UCSB EA and third-year statistical science major, will also be attending the event.

“I have been contacting startup companies local to the Central Coast in order to bring them to the event. I think this will become an annual fair since everyone on our leadership team wants to continue the event for future years. Also the involvement of students in entrepreneurship has never been better,” Barney said in an email.

Attendees are encouraged to bring a student I.D. or perm number and resume copies. More information can be found on EA’s Facebook event page.

A version of this story appeared on p. 6 of the Thursday, April 28, 2016 print edition of the Daily Nexus.