About a month ago, the UW Career Center hosted a career fair that drew hundreds of students and at least a hundred companies, some looking to hire new employees and some just wanting to get their name out.

Today, UW students will get another chance to vie for job openings, although, this career fair looks a little different.

The Spring Sales and Marketing Career Fair is the first completely student-driven career fair on campus, organized by the UW American Marketing Association (AMA) and the University Sales Club (USC). The two clubs — which have a combined total of about 50 registered members — have been holding meetings every week since February to plan the event.

From the students’ perspective, the career fair will be very similar to the one held last month, said AMA President Dinara Abilova, a senior in marketing.

However, for members of the two clubs, the venture was an invaluable learning experience.

“From our perspective, it was obviously an experience that showed us what it really takes to create an event … but also that the student organizations can be pretty powerful in the events that they drive,” Abilova said. “If they feel like there is some sort of events that they need more of, such as the career fair, they can really put up events that are usually put up by the administration of the university.”

The Sales and Marketing Career Fair will be much smaller than the Career Center Career Fair for several reasons.

For instance, they’re limited to 20 employers due to the confined space of the Balmer Hall Commons, but also, the event is focused on particular fields — sales and marketing — and is looking to cater specifically to those students.

The idea for the event came to USC President Britnee Weza, a senior working toward her sales certificate, when she and her adviser, Jack Rhodes, the director of the Foster School of Business sales program, were brainstorming ways to raise funds for the certification program.

“I approached Dinara from the marketing club. Since it’s a completely new event, I thought we should work with another club,” Weza said. “She needed some funds for her club, so she thought it was a great idea to do it together and have all our funds combined.”

Hosting a career fair that’s independent of the Career Center has posed challenges for the two groups. More than anything, the clubs had to work much harder to get noticed, as they don’t have the Career Center’s access to the e-mail addresses of the entire school.

“We have to do our own marketing,” Weza said. “We put up fliers, we put an ad in The Daily, made Facebook group events … and we’ve approached different departments specifically.”

Another difficulty was convincing employers to participate in the fair.

Jennifer Kitchen, the coordinator of student development for the Foster School of Business, said that was her first thought when the students approached her.

“I was concerned about getting companies and recruiters to attend in this economy,” she wrote in an e-mail. “Now, I’ve seen how hard the students have worked to make this a success. The booths are filled to capacity for the space we have, the logistics are planned to the last detail, and they’ve done an amazing job of collaborating with everyone involved.”

While the clubs think it’s especially important to host the event in this time of economic recession, they want to hold it again in coming years as well.

“If students like it,” Weza said, “we will definitely continue to do it every year and hopefully expand.”

Reach reporter Molly Rosbach at news@dailyuw.com.