Career Fairs: May I Have a Mug, Sir?

1. Show Up. This is self-explanatory, right? On a number of occasions, a company would set up a table with a poster or two alongside a locked bin for people to drop their resumes in. I don't mind if a one-person booth steps out for a little bit for a snack or to use the restroom, but I've seen more than several booths totally unmanned during an entire fair. It puts a bad image on your company that you can't even bother to send an individual or two to represent your interests.

2. If you don't have positions open, don't show up. This might contradict point #1, but almost worse yet were people who were just there to collect resumes even though they didn't have jobs open at their company. It's just as stimulating as getting an email saying "We'll keep your resume on file." If you're not hiring, why am I talking to you?

3. On demanding absolute GPA minimums. I get that each company wants to hire the best and the brightest especially when hosting booths at university fairs, but honestly those who are expecting a certain GPA without giving any consideration to experience or what the candidate demonstrates in knowledge.. well, it makes you look like asses. I recall(read: I was bitter for a little while about) talking to a recruiter from a well respected financial company looking for developers. The first thing he asked me was my GPA, and after telling him it was about .08 points under their minimum cut-off, he simply handed my resume back and refused to talk to me. Joke's on them since I got hired at a larger one a little while after I graduated about a year later...

4. If you're a big company, send multiple people. Our time is just as valuable as yours, and I don't want to wait for 30 other people to each get done shooting their 4-minute breeze with you as the only person at your table. Having multiple people to talk to candidates helps everyone feel like the line is moving, and distracts me from having to mentally figure out how many other companies I could've talked to while I waited in your line. I understand it's not always possible since career fairs are pretty low on a company's day-to-day priority list, but nevertheless it should be taken into consideration.

5. Go beyond brochures I'm a literate person and I've probably already combed through your website. Talk to me about what you do, and what your experience with your company has been like. Smiling and handing me a brochure and hoping that I'll walk away isn't going to leave me with a memorable impression.

6. Free swag rules This isn't actually a bone to pick.. but having unique swag to give out is good PR. If you don't have anything it's perfectly fine, too. But people like free stuff :)

I've seen this, and I've seen it taken a step further where they walked down every point of experience on their resume telling me why they thought that particular course in school or work stint would make them be a good fit at my organization.

I much rather that the introduction is kept to, "I'm Bob, I'm a graduating computer science major and I'm interested in blahblah, what do you guys do?" because that turns into a mutually beneficial back-and-forth conversation very quickly.

I do wonder if this is a cultural thing, though, and just an honest go at expressing interest in the position. When I was recruiting at career fairs, the only people I noticed doing this were graduate students from India who had spent only a short time in the US. And typically the people with the extremely expressive introduction came otherwise heavily prepared, with a resume and cover letter hand-tailored to job postings on our website.

I can't fault anyone for preparation, however, given so many people come totally unprepared -- "man, you're the tenth person today to ask for a copy of my resume, nobody told me I should've brought any!"

So you should fart and then NOT walk away? Clearly, you should stick around because... we will want to hire you? I mean, what's the alternative here?

Booth-sitters are usually bored, know less about the details of the job you might get than the people you'd be working with (they're often HR), and have dealt with many kids wearing suits and sounding important. But they are there to be the first line of defense. So be yourself, someone they could work with and maybe even like, rather than someone who sounds like everyone is trying to sound like!

And bring a resume. One page. If you can't sell yourself in half that, they won't read the rest, so make your point and make it fast.

I agree completely. After all, lattes don't make themselves, now do they?

... this entire blog post was about how people were doing the wrong things.