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Beyond knowing the ins-and-outs of job fair resumes, you also need to practice your job-fair-networking abilities in order to master the job fair. In addition to being great places to drop many resumes, job fairs are great places to interact with company representatives. In fact, it is necessary to speak with those representatives in order to leave your resume with them. You will want to leave a good impression of yourself with the representative that will last long enough for them to pull your resume out of a huge stack for later review.
Job fair networking involves speaking with, getting to know, and extracting contact details from company representatives and recruiters. You need to go through this process because employers want to check that job fair attendants are good fits for the company. Whether or not you mesh with other people in the company is difficult to show on a piece of paper, so you have to pro-actively prove to the representative that you are in fact a good fit. A good place to begin is JobConcierge.com that has an extensive list of job fairs and career fairs online.
Before dropping your resume, you should try to seek out the company’s senior managers or hiring managers. Other employees are great, too, but you want the people with influence to remember that you are a great candidate for the job they’ll be making the decisions about who to hire at the end of the day.
One of the most important parts of job fair networking is preparing properly. Before you even set foot in the fair, you should have prepared a short statement (up to one minute long) about why you would be a good fit, about your background, and about why you are enthusiastic about working for the company. The statement should not be memorized, but you should certainly have an outline of what you want to say and what ideas you want to convey to representatives before you speak with anyone. The employees need to know that you didn’t turn up to leave resumes with every company in a desperate attempt to get any interview thrown your way. To make sure you have your blurb down, you should find a friend before the fair and practice responses to such questions as, Can you tell me about yourself? There are plenty of other possible questions out there revolving around your career plans and work experience that you should also practice.
If you do your research in advance, you will also be able to let the company know how you think you can help them in their current state. If you’re aware that the company is launching new projects in China, for example, you should let them know that you are fluent in Mandarin, have worked with native Chinese in the past, and can help lead projects by being the first line of interaction with the native workforce (but only if these details are all actually true!). Again, you’re trying to make a good, memorable impression for the representatives.
Before you go to your next job fair, don’t forget to thoroughly practice, research, and prepare yourself. We recommend you review JobConcierge.com for career advice and more job fair information. This is the best way to make sure you leave a good impression with each representative at the fair. If you’re fortunate, your networking preparation (and strong resume) will result in the start of a new career.
At JobConcierge Executive Job Search, real people search through 300 job boards and submit applications. JobConcierge job search optimization is known for its comprehensive job fair database
