It's that time of the semester again. The time to start thinking toward the future. Whether by landing a first real, career-oriented job, or by preparing to get the right internship, Career Services is there to walk students step-by-step through that sometimes tough process with the Career and Internship Fair.

Starting at 10 a.m. and running until 3 p.m. Feb. 25 in the Southeast Missouri State University Student Recreation Center-North, the career fair will be packed with more booths and possibilities than ever before.

"This is going to be the largest career fair we've ever hosted," Dan Presson, coordinator for employer relations, said. "We've actually maxed out the number of employers that we can actually hold. We currently have a waiting list where these employers are trying to get into the career fair."

And with such large potential for students to gain success outside of the classroom, Presson said they are trying to reach every student they possibly can.

"We have probably tripled our marketing for this," Presson said.

With the increased marketing, Career Services is hoping to bring in a higher number of students, which last year was quite limited compared to the number of students at Southeast.

"We've been frustrated, to be quite honest, with the participation," Michele Tapp, director of academic advising and Career Services, said. "On a campus of this size, we should have 1,000 students at this event. Last spring we had 469, and we were excited about that."

Looking toward the future is not just something junior- and senior-level students should be considering, Presson said he wants students to start much earlier.

The fair isn't the only way Career Services hopes to connect students with employers, there also is Red Connect, a job and internship posting website for students and alumni.

"Red Connect has over 17,000 registered users," Presson said. "Currently there are 200 jobs posted on Red Connect that require varying amounts of experience."

Alongside Red Connect is the Blitz List, a list where local and on-campus part-time jobs can be posted.

"Red Connect is going really smoothly," Presson said. "One thing we've seen in the past couple of months with students and employers is there has been a little bit of confusion between the Blitz List and Red Connect. They wonder where to post their positions and which position goes where."

With the confusion Career Services has seen with its relatively new Blitz List and Red Connect, starting this summer the two will be merged together into redhawkjobs.com. Both students and alumni who are looking for a position, as well as employers looking to fill a job position, will be able to find one another in one centralized website.

Presson said the office is looking to launch the new website July 1 with serious advertising during First Step days for students looking to land part-time jobs. But according to Tapp, this isn't the only reason.

"With the recent portal upgrade, when you do something that's strange, students don't like it," Tapp said. "We think it gives us enough opportunity to do it right, and for us to roll it out right now, as much as we would love to roll out redhawkjobs.com right now, it just doesn't make sense. It makes more sense to start when students are in the middle of summer and maybe starting to think about fall."