The Career Fair opens on Sunday
The INFORMS Annual Meeting 2026 runs 1 to 4 November at Moscone Center South and the San Francisco Marriott Marquis. The Career Fair and Networking Day runs Sunday 1 November from 11am to 5pm Pacific in Golden Gate Ballroom C on the B2 Level at the Marriott Marquis.
Interviews run on Monday 2 November and Tuesday 3 November from 8am to 5pm Pacific. The employer page states that interview appointments should only be scheduled on those two days between 8am and 5pm Pacific. The meeting agenda carries the same window on both days.
Job seekers take three registration steps. The first is registration for the Annual Meeting. The second is a Career Center job seeker account. The third is registration for the Career Fair on the Career Center event page.
Two colloquia open the week on Saturday
The 2026 Doctoral Student Colloquium and the 2026 New Faculty Colloquium both run on Saturday 31 October at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis. The colloquia page gives the window as 8am to 5pm. The special events table books both into Foothill G on the 2nd level from 8am to 7pm, and the agenda grid opens the combined colloquia at 7:30am.
The Doctoral Student Colloquium targets doctoral students two to three years from graduation. Sessions cover the academic job market, teaching-focused faculty positions and industry or applied research roles. The New Faculty Colloquium covers the first years of a faculty appointment and lists three entry requirements: INFORMS membership or a pending membership application, employment as a pre-tenure faculty member, and attendance at the 2026 Annual Meeting.
Cost is $175 for a doctoral student and $285 for new faculty. Both require pre-registration and an additional fee.
Ebru Bish chairs the Combined Colloquia. Jennifer K. Ryan and Yigit Arisoy co-chair the Doctoral Student Colloquium. Matthew J. Drake and Maria E. Mayorga co-chair the New Faculty Colloquium.
Two job search panels and a free coaching desk
The Academic Job Search Panel runs Monday 2 November from 11am to 12:15pm Pacific in Sierra A on the 5th floor at the Marriott Marquis. Priyank Arora moderates, with Elif Akcali of the University of Florida, Auyon Siddiq of the UCLA Anderson School of Management, Xian Yu of the Ohio State University and Soh Hyun Cho of Erasmus University on the panel.
The Industry Job Search Panel runs on the same day from 2:45pm to 4pm Pacific in the same room. Carrie Beam moderates, with Xiaohui Xiong of Chevron, Cecilia ODonnell of Data Driven Supply Chain and Maral Shahmizad of Delta Air Lines on the panel.
Virtual resume review and career coaching run free of charge through INFORMS members. Resume review offers an academic track and an industry track. Sessions run about 30 minutes and registration stays open through 30 November, so a job seeker can book one session or several.
A virtual workshop titled How to Be Distinctive and Earn Credibility in the Age of AI Sameness ran on Monday 22 September with Vanessa Errecarte. The organiser lists the recording as coming soon.
The Job Market Showcase Track
The Job Market Showcase Track places job seekers and employers in one cluster. Each session carries four job talks. The organiser recommends a 15-minute presentation and a 3-minute question period for each speaker.
A candidate qualifies for a job talk on four published conditions: current INFORMS membership, a post-doc or PhD-student position with an anticipated completion by summer 2027 or a PhD granted within the past two years, an active academic or industry job search in the 2026-2027 school year, and advisor confirmation of eligibility. A speaker in the track may not give another technical talk at the conference. Submissions closed on 11 May 2026.
Swati Gupta and Lacy Greening co-chair the track.
The employer side
Employers register in advance and select from a published package list. The organiser requires written cancellation requests by 11:59pm Eastern Time on 14 October 2026. Cancellations after that point and before the event start are not eligible for a full refund, although the fee may be applied to a future Career Fair. Cancellations after the event start receive no refund.
The participating employer list carries the date 9 September 2026 beside its heading. Named employers include ExxonMobil, Lyft, McKinsey, The Walt Disney Company, United Airlines, CNA, Concentra, Optilogic and the Naval Postgraduate School, alongside university departments from the United States, China, Singapore, Mexico and Turkey.
The organiser discourages recruiting and interviewing outside the scheduled Career Fair events.
What the week adds to the room block
The organiser's sponsorship page carries a 2025 Annual Meeting demographics block with 6,000+ attendees, a 42 percent student share, an 85 percent academic audience and a 12 percent industry audience. The Career Fair, the two colloquia and both panels sit at the Marriott Marquis, one of the two properties in the official room block.
Geocoded coordinates put the Marriott Marquis about 335 metres, or 0.21 miles, from Moscone South on a straight-line measurement. The other block property, the InterContinental San Francisco at 888 Howard Street, sits about 376 metres, or 0.23 miles, away. The block's published cut-off date was 8 October 2026.
The Career Fair sits on the Sunday and the interview days run on the Monday and the Tuesday, so the recruiter stay spans three nights. Colloquia attendees add the Saturday night, and both colloquia open at 8am on Saturday 31 October.