750Standing out at Career Faires
posted on February 11th, 2010
Standing out at a Job Fair can make a difference in your career search. Career Faires are starting to pick up, and Dice is running some nice ones, called Targeted Job Fairs. At a Silicon Valley Job Fair in early 2010, 10 companies as showing up, and a major job search company has 82 job faires scheduled for this year across the US.
How do you get to the real interviews at a Career Fair? The competition can be substantial, but you can help yourself leap out from the gang with early planning. At AA-Careers, we have a simple step-by-step process to get ready. Plan to go? Here’s how to prepare:
First, investigate the companies that are going and pick your objectives. Use the World Wide Web to check out the organizations that are there ahead of time. Go to their sites and see if they have their jobs listed. Pick a sound number to go after, and get ready to spend an hour researching each one. It’s hard to do more than ten in a day, and four to six is a much more reasonable target. For each company, you want to know: recent news, key product lines, and contacts you know. Try to see if you know anyone at the target companies. You should end up 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 requirements of the job. Make the terminology match. If the hiring company calls customers "clients", your resume should do the same thing. The accomplishments should be written in the style of the hiring company.
Third, create a ‘brief sales pitch’ for each potential company/job combination. Write down a 90 second ‘thumbnail’ that you can repeat verbally depicting why you are a fantastic prospect for that job. You’ll use this in your resume and when you meet people at the job kiosk.
Fourth, modify your resume for each position. The objective on your resume should exactly match the job you’re going after. 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 description. Especially at a Job Fair, 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, practice 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 distinctly labeled 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 cologne or fragrance meagerly, if at all.
Remember to smile, and good hunting!
