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District 1’s Chance Cole (L) and Ryan Hawkins (R) joined Justin Wuest at the University of Idaho’s Career Fair
at the Kibbie Dome in October.

Districts recruit Vandals, Bengals and Cougars

Employee-led recruiting is spreading across the state, with two different districts attending career fairs at their respective home universities in October.

Justin Wuest, Ryan “the Captain” Hawkins and Chance Cole from engineering represented ITD at the University of Idaho, and Zak Johnson and Eric Staats also from engineering did the same at Idaho State University and Brigham Young University-Idaho.

“Recruiting has been somewhat of a struggle lately,” Wuest said. “We thought we’d better cast a wider net.”

Jenna Pettek from human resources helped Wuest register for the event and provided the necessary swag. The D1 group developed a spreadsheet to track the names, contact info, position status, locations and resumes for interested students, which now has 42 names.
Although these ambassadors came for engineers, they found other students who would also fit in at ITD’s Bridge, ETS and HQ sections.

“One of my main takeaways was that our attendance raised awareness about what we do at ITD and the variety of opportunities,” Wuest said. “It was easy to highlight the culture we have to differentiate ourselves from other employers.”

The magical spreadsheet was passed around, and within a week Wuest had made contact with Zak Johnson of D5 who also had planned to recruit. He was able to add 20 names to the list.