Career Fair Success
I was browsing around Careerealism the other day and came across a post by Danielle Ouellette about Job Fairs. After reading the post, I realized that I share a lot of the same opinions about the relative usefulness of these events.
One of my favorite job fair stories is that of my friend Matt. He found a great way to connect with a specific recruiter without having to stand in line (I detailed his success story in Overcoming Gradversity). This connection allowed him to land a well paying Entry Level Job over 300 other candidates! All because of the way he approached the career fair. It’s a great story.
Ultimately, like Danielle says, it is all about the connection you make:
Have a conversation with the recruiter, find a way to connect. I ended up talking to one guy yesterday about an ad campaign his company had worked one that is one of my favorites. After a few minutes of honest conversation, he asked me for my resume and to follow-up with him with some of my portfolio clips.
If you show up, line up, and file out, you are never going to stand out from the crowd. You have to strike up a conversation, find some common ground, leave your resume in their hands (NOT IN A BOX), and follow up. There is no other way to get anything other than promotional material from a job fair.
But that’s just my opinion.
Have any of you had any success at job fairs? I would love to here your story. Connect with me on Twitter or share your story in a comment.
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