Every year students can look forward to the Industrial Organizational/Organizational Behavior (IOOB) Graduate Student Conference. This Conference provides many opportunities. Because the IOOB Conference targets students, as opposed to seasoned researchers and practitioners, it allows for more lenient acceptance rates for student research. Besides presenting their own research, students also benefit from workshops and keynote speeches of well-known I/O professionals. The Conference is certainly an environment to network and meet others in the I/O field. Indeed, one purpose of the Conference is to connect people, to make that great match between the "job-giver" and the "job-seeker."
This year the IOOB Conference takes place in the beautiful and "windy" city of Chicago. Conveniently, the site of the Conference is IIT's downtown campus in the midst of Chicago's financial district. A very advantageous location, since Chicago is a vibrant hub for business and industry, a city second only to New York in the number of company headquarters.
The Conference program has been thoughtfully prepared to match the current trends in research and practice, and befitting the Conference location is entitled "The Winds of Change: Past, Present, and Future Influences of I/O Psychology." It focuses on the ways in which I/O research and practices have improved the working lives of individuals in the past, continue to do so in the present, and how the latest innovations will shape the future. I/O psychologists are sometimes thought of as the agents of management, working to increase organizational profit. In reality, this is only one aspect of the profession. Another aspect involves improving the lives of the employees. In this Conference, the stage is given to the researchers and practitioners who have made and are making a significant impact in the lives of working people.
So why should anyone make the time to attend the IOOB Conference? Because they will find a great number of talented graduate students presenting and discussing new research ideas; because top professionals in the field will present their views and be approachable to students; and because it will be a great networking event. Moreover, undergraduate students may decide whether the field of I/O Psychology is right for them.