Attend Career Fairs With A Plan

I'm often asked if career or job fairs are good places to find a job.  My answer: it depends on your approach.

To start not all job fairs are the alike.  You've probably seen the local news showing people wrapped around the block at the local convention center.  You might discover a few local companies that you didn't know about but it's unlikely that you will be able to do anything more than drop off a resumé. 

But industry specific job fairs and those conducted on your college campus can be great places for you to have on-the-spot interviews with companies that are actively looking for entry-level candidates ready to start an internship or start a job right after graduation.  Yes, this happens. A client prepared for a on-campus career fair conducted by the college's business school. He was interviewed by a leading consulting firm on the spot, called back for a second and then third interview, did an internship at the company and started full-time right after graduation. He's been there going on  five years and already promoted twice.

I've heard many of you say that your college career center sets up career fairs  only for engineering students, accounting majors and other professional/direct-to-career degrees but not for the Arts & Sciences majors. But what's stopping you from attending as a communication, anthropology or sociology major. These companies all have marketing, human resources, sales and other departments that are integral to the organization. And if your objective is to get your resumé into the hands of a real person (not a software program) at a company that is looking for young talent then attending that career fair makes good strategic sense. 

Another career fair approach that can have a big return on your time investment is one developed with along with a More Than A Resumé client who earned her masters degree in special education.  We set a goal that in the three-hour job fair she would have a ten to fifteen minute interview with ten schools.

Here's the approach she took to achieve that goal.

• Developed criteria that each school needed to meet.
• Researched all 51 participating schools against the criteria selecting 10 schools that met those standards and ranked them in priority order.
• Downloaded the job fair floor plan showing the booth location of each of the schools.
• Mapped a path against the floor plan to make her time efficient.
• Created a job fair specific resumé --all credentials, certifications top 1/4 of the resume to make her qualifications standout.
• Created a one-page handout of pictures showing herself in various teaching situations with quotes from her references to immediately enforce her experience and ease with students. (She said she was the only one with this type of handout and each school complimented her on it.)

What were her results?

By the time she got home, she had five schools that emailed her with requests for 1:1 interviews. Within one month she landed her dream job. 

I'm writing about this now to encourage those of you going back to school in the fall and for those who have graduated to find the appropriate career fairs for your career goals and to go with a plan not just a resumé.  
 

© 2012 More Than A Resumé