Competing Successfully at Career Faires
Standing out at a Career Faire can make a difference in your career search. Career Fairs are starting to pick up, and Dice is running some nice ones, called Targeted Job Fairs. At a SF Bay Area Career Fair in January, 10 companies as showing up, and Dice has 82 career faires scheduled for this year across the States.
How do you get to the real interviews at a Job Fair? The rivalry can be significant, but you can help yourself leap out from the herd with early planning. At AA-Careers, we have a simple 6-step process to get ready. Planning to go? Here’s how to prepare:
First, investigate the organizations that are going and pick your objectives. Use the internet to check out the companies that are there ahead of time. Go to their websites and see if they have their openings posted. Pick a moderate number to target, and get ready to spend about an hour researching each one. It’s hard to do more than ten in a day, and 3-5 is a much more reasonable target. For each hiring organization, you want to know: recent news, key product lines, and exectuve names. Try to see if you know anyone at the target companies. You will end up with with a page or two of research for each company/job.
Second, if there are job openings on the web, read them to see what the organization is looking for. Create a mapping of your accomplishments and skills to the prerequisites of the job. Make the nomenclature match. If the hiring organization calls customers "clients", your resume should do the same thing. The accomplishments should be written in the style of the hiring organization.
Third, create a ‘thumbnail sales pitch’ for each potential organization/position combination. Write down a 60 second ‘thumbnail’ that you can repeat out loud depicting why you are a key candidate for that position. You’ll use this in your resume and when you meet the company at the job kiosk.
Fourth, modify your resume for each opportunity. The objective on your resume should exactly match the job you’re aiming for. The executive summary should be a written form of your “mini sales pitch” for the job. Then choose the accomplishments and skills that most clearly match the job prerequisites. Especially at a Career Faire, the purpose of your resume is a sales tool for you – to get you on-site job interviews. It should be very easy to see that you’re a fit based on your resume.
Fifth, rehearse your ‘mini-sales-pitch’. Collect your research and the resume for each spot - bring a couple of copies for each – and put each in a intelligibly marked folder. Keep them in a lightweight briefcase or folio.
Finally, dress and prepare as if you’re doing on-site interviews. Dress well and be properly groomed. Avoid strong cologne or perfume…use any eau de cologne or perfume meagerly, if at all.
Remember to smile, and good hunting!
