The Student Engineering Council will host its annual UT-Austin Engineering EXPO on Sept. 7 and 8.

The event, which will be held at the Frank Erwin Center, will allow more than 5,000 undergraduate and graduate engineering students to showcase their talents to over 300 companies, including Amazon, AT&T, Capital One, Ford Motor Company, General Electric and Microsoft. 

Marco Heredia, a chemical engineering senior and president of the council, said he has attended the event for the past three years and has high hopes for the 2016 EXPO.

“I am hoping to get to know companies a bit better and get a sense of their culture,” he Heredia said. “I personally put a lot of value in company culture when recruiting, because the people and working environment are actually more important to me than the day-to-day work I would be doing.”

Returning Longhorns also pop up at the event, looking to recruit more potential employees from the 40 Acres.

“It’s always exciting to see all the UT alumni who are now recruiting UT students on behalf of their companies,” chemical engineering senior Daniel Sullivan said. “They often share advice and stories about how their experience at UT helped them reach their current career path.” 

With numerous companies at the event, Sullivan said students come hoping to put their best foot forward and leave a good mark on companies for potential employment.

“As someone who is interested in the consumer-products side of chemical engineering, I’m looking forward to talking with PepsiCo, Johnson & Johnson and Anheuser-Busch, among many other companies,” Sullivan said. 

The EXPO will host a wide range of companies from many different fields, giving engineering students plenty of options for what tables to visit.  

“The CIA, NSA and Sandia National Laboratories are all names that stand out to me when skimming the company list,” Heredia said. “I find it really cool that these type of agencies come to UT-Austin and are looking for engineers to help them fulfill their missions.” 

The council will also host a golf tournament for engineering students at the Lost Creek Country Club and a senior reception for graduating seniors on Sept. 6 to give students time to mingle with potential employers while not at the event, Heredia said. 

The EXPO, which is the second-largest student-run career fair in the nation, has been going for more than 30 years. The EXPO committee is a group of 25 engineering students selected each year to plan the event. 

“The EXPO Committee deserves a lot of praise for how well the career fair has gone in the past and how I am sure it will go this year as well,” Heredia said. “I find it amazing that students are able to put on such an incredible even and that often gets lost in the madness of it all.”