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Career Fair Advice
Career Fair Success Strategies

By: Maureen Crawford Hentz

Career Fairs can occasionally be intimidating. As a job-seeker, you must distinguish yourself from hundreds or even thousands of other job applicants. The following are a few simple strategies to help you stand out from the crowd.

• Find a Fair. Many career fairs are free, but some require a registration and/or fee. The first place to look for a career fair is your alma mater. Colleges and universities routinely hold career fairs for students and alumni. Call your college's career service office and find out if you need to register and what the general format of the fair will be.
  Professional organizations also often sponsor large career fairs at their national and regional conferences. Many organizations require membership for admission to the conference and career fair, but some sell day-long "placement-only" admission. Unsure about which professional associations would be best for you and which career fairs will have what you want? Query the Internet for professional associations in your field (for example, Interior + Design + Association) and see if the resulting Web sites indicate career-fair participants.
  Finally, look in the Help-Wanted section of your local newspaper. Many career fairs are listed in their own column. Also look for employers with large ads to see if any indicate "We will be at the ElectroMechanical Job Expo next week!"
• Choose the Right Fair. You probably don't want to waste your time at a medical-technology fair if you are looking for a position in education. Do your research. If possible, get the names of companies that will be recruiting at the fair. Hosting agencies often post an abridged list to attract job-seekers like you.
• Arrive Early. As a career-fair recruiting veteran, I can confidently attest that my ability to remember names, faces, and details of candidates waned as the day went on. Rolling my materials into each career fair, I set up my table in eager anticipation of the fabulous candidates I would find. As the fair picked up, while my eagerness never diminished, my ability to remember candidate details did. Go early to ensure quality time with the recruiters.
• Do a Reconnaissance Circuit First. When you get to the fair, don't go into a frenzy of resume dropping-off. Sit down with the program and decide on the order in which you will talk to recruiters. Many career fair veterans agree that beginning in the back of the room and working your way to the front is the way to go - you are seeing recruiters fresh, while people who started in the front may be starting to lose energy. While you are getting the lay of the land, pick up information from the tables. Information, as well as freebies such as pens, magnets, and stress balls, are there for the taking. Gather information on companies of particular interest and sit down in the candidate lounge. Information may include company annual reports, brochures, and a list of open positions. Review the materials so that you have a starting point for conversation with each recruiter.
• Have a Booth Speech. Too many times I would see candidates going down a row of tables asking the dreaded question "Can you tell me a little bit about your company?" As a recruiter, no matter how much you like to talk to people, this question becomes old quickly. Better to have a booth speech that you give to the recruiter. "Hello Aurora, I wanted to introduce myself to you. My name is Janet Ridge. I am an Asian-studies trainer with six years of experience, and I wanted to talk to you about the Training Specialist vacancy at XYZ Company."
• Hone In. As you begin talking, the recruiter then may ask you questions about yourself or tell you about the position. Ensure that you make eye contact and listen carefully for tidbits that are not mentioned in the written materials. If you are interested in the company or a position therein, ask for the recruiter's business card and leave a resume.
  In addition, go back to the candidate lounge and write a short note to the employer. Attach it to your resume and redeposit into the employer's resume box. Your note should be brief and professional and reference your conversation. "Dear Aurora, thank you for spending time with me today at the AsiaAlive! Recruiting Fair. I appreciate your making time to explain the detailed requirements of the Training Specialist position, as well as the history of the position. Please do feel free to contact me directly if you need additional information." This note can be handwritten but should be stapled directly to your resume. At the end of the fair (or sometimes during it), recruiters go through the resumes making notes on impressive candidates. Attaching a note to the resume is a way to distinguish yourself from other candidates who don't bother with this step.
• Don't be a Booth Buffoon. Recruiters are there to find many good candidates - not just one. Don't monopolize a recruiter by taking all his/her time. If a line develops behind you, be sensitive to that. Say something like "Thank you so much for speaking with me. I see you have quite a line, and I don't want to monopolize your time." Then, get out of the way. If you are particularly interested in making another contact, it is fine to come back again when the line has died down.
  If a recruiter is speaking generally to another candidate, it is perfectly acceptable to join the conversation, make eye contact, and ask questions. It is not necessary to wait in a line for individual one-on-one attention, particularly if you plan to ask a similar question.
• After the Fair. Follow-up is extremely important. Recruiters will collect hundreds or thousands of resumes at a large career fair. If you are interested in applying for a specific position, go to the company Web site and apply directly using the company's preferred format. Open your cover letter by indicating that you discovered the position at theAsiaAlive! Career Fair and in speaking with recruiter Aurora Crawford, you became convinced that this was the position for you. You may also want to follow up with an email to the recruiter directly, if that information is on the business card.
  In the future, if other positions are advertised for that company, use your inside connection with the recruiter. Apply using the company's preferred process and then send an email along with your resume to the recruiter you met at the career fair. That recruiter may or may not be working with the new position but could be provide the foot in the door that you need. Your email would say something like "Dear Ms. Crawford, I met you last March at the AsiaAlive! Recruiting Fair. At that time we discussed XYZ Company and the Training Specialist position. I see you now have a Country Specialist position available in the Tokyo office, and I wanted to contact you directly to express my interest. My resume and cover letter are attached. Of course, I have also applied through your company Web site."

Final Thoughts
Career Fairs don't have to be intimidating. Remember that the recruiters are there to find you. Recruiters' success is determined by sourcing appropriate candidates and funneling them toward the company. Remember that you are what they are looking for. Employing these success strategies is sure to make a difference in the kind, quantity and quality of your career-fair interactions.

QuintZine regular contributor Maureen Crawford Hentz is the director of career services at Wentworth Institute of Technology, Boston. An independent career and HR consultant she has been working with career-seekers for 10 years. She has a master's degree in college student personnel from Bowling Green State University. A popular conference lecturer, she specializes in large and small specially designed workshops for professional organizations, students and environmental groups. Her most popular career workshops address topics including: Non-Verbal Techniques To Use During an Interview; Powerful Resumes; and Interviewing Etiquette You've Never Even Thought About. She has a particular interest in job-searching techniques for differently-abled candidates, new grads, and career changers.

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Career Counseling in the 21st Century

By: Ron McGowan

"We're a society that knows how to apply for a job. The challenge for employment seekers today is to become proficient at finding work. That's a much more complicated process than applying for a job."

This is the reality facing students who are graduating from secondary and post-secondary institutes and people who are losing their jobs due to downsizing. The vast majority of them have no idea about how to become proficient at finding work. It creates a huge opportunity for career counselors. But it also creates a challenge for them because many of them have spent their careers in traditional jobs and have never had to become proficient at finding work.
In trend-setting California, according to a study by the University of San Francisco, 66 percent of the workforce is employed in non-traditional jobs, i.e. part-time, temporary, contract or self-employment. This is where we're all headed - and we're not ready for it. How do career counselors who have never known anything but a traditional job prepare their students for this reality? Indeed, how can they relate to the challenges of earning a living outside of a traditional job if they've never experienced this themselves?

"The fundamental challenge for educators is that for generations they've been turning out employees. Now they have to turn out entrepreneurs or at least students who have an enterprising approach to finding work."
If you're a student or downsized worker looking for work, there's no law that says that anybody is going to offer you a job. The onus is on these people to find the employment opportunities that are out there or, in some cases, to create their own. This is a new role for most people, and our education, training and in some cases our upbringing does not prepare us well for it. Acquiring self-marketing skills has to be a part of the educational experience, which is not the case for most students today.
Teaching such skills is a real challenge for administrators, faculty, teachers and career counselors, because most of them have no experience looking for work in today's workplace. All of them need to face the irony that they're responsible for preparing their students for a workplace that they themselves can't relate to and to see how best to address this lack of experience.
At a higher level, governments, school boards and the bureaucrats who oversee our education system must recognize how much the workplace has changed and make sure students are being adequately prepared to succeed in it.

"We must recognize how much more important the field of Career Counseling is today given the challenges students face in entering the workplace. We must look for ways to make it more effective, and allocate more resources to it."

According to a January 2006 poll by Ipsos-Reid, two-thirds of working Canadians wish they had sought more career-planning advice when they were starting out. A February 2007 study by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development in the U.K. showed that a third of the graduates believe they studied the wrong course at university. In September 2005, research from the U.K. Graduate Recruitment Bureau suggested that two thirds of graduates were dissatisfied with their university career services.
At Indiana University's Kelley School, business undergrads are now required to take two for-credit, career-related courses. One focuses on self-assessment and the other stresses actual internship and job-search strategies. These should be required courses in every college and university and more resources should be committed to these areas in our secondary schools. And they would be if the administrators, bureaucrats and politicians who are responsible for funding and managing our education system understood how much the workplace has changed.
Career counseling has never been a high priority within our education system, at either the secondary or post-secondary level. Further, in times of budget restraint, it is often first on the list of items eligible for cutbacks and that has to change. The key question is: how does the typical educational institute elevate an area that historically has been a low priority to the much higher level it must operate at in order for their students to succeed in the new workplace?
The challenge for career counselors in these institutes, today and tomorrow, is to show their students how to succeed in the workplace with a different set of tools and strategies than has been used in the past. All educational institutions must continually upgrade their training, teaching and skill-development processes to better enable their members and graduates to acquire the necessary ever-changing skills needed for success in today's workplace.
The transitions occurring in the workplace today are among the most significant since the high unemployment of the Great Depression and the need for effective career counseling is greater than it has ever been. This new era will be full of opportunities and challenges for career counselors.

Ron McGowan is the principal of How To Find Work in Vancouver. He has been helping experienced people and college/university students find work for over ten years. The 2007 edition of his book "How to Find Work in the 21st Century", currently in use at well over 200 colleges, universities and secondary schools in Canada, the U.S., the U.K. and Ireland, has recently been released. It has been significantly updated and is full of ideas for career counsellors. It can be previewed at: http://www.trafford.com/00-0131

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How to Neutralize Information Overload

There's just too much information out there. In fact, information processing amounts for half of the gross national product - and a ton of it ends up on paper that someone has to read. But you don't have to fall prey to information overload. You just have to be more strategic about the information you choose to take in. Here are five steps to becoming a picky information consumer:

Step 1: Don't read everything that comes to you. You simply can't absorb everything you think you need to know. Once you admit that, you'll better be able to prioritize, delegate or ignore the information that comes your way.

Step 2: Assess your information sources. Take a couple of hours deciding which sources of information are essential to your job. Weed out any publication, website, report or professionally associated information that isn't of the highest quality.

Step 3: When you open a publication, look through the table of contents first. Scan for topics and article summaries. Choose only articles or reports that you need to read. Don't waste your time on information just because it's mildly interesting to you. Stick to what's important.

Step 4: Use your highlighter. Once you commit to reading an article, underline any information you want to refer to later. Throw out any article or report that doesn't have any highlighted passages.

Step 5: Be an example. If you don't want to get bogged down by long e-mails or voice messages, keep your own short. Let others know that they should keep their information as concise as possible - and chastise them when they don't.

- Adapted from The Power of Simplicity, by Jack Trout and Steve Rivkin (McGraw-Hill)

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Participating in Video Conferences

A video conference isn't just a phone conversation with a visual element, so don't go into one without advanced planning. Try these tips to get the most out of the technology:

• Don't wear stripes. The fewer visual distractions, the better your message gets across. That means don't wear plaids or prints - they tend to strobe. Stick to pastel colors or dark solids. Keep in mind that white may glare and red may bleed on the screen.
  
• Plan your visual aids. The main advantage of a video conference is the ability to use visual aids to enhance your points. Like any face-to-face presentation, you have to plan carefully how and when you'll use graphics. Remember to give other participants a heads-up before you display a graphic so no one else tries to transmit one at the same time.
  
• Use the mute button. Many video conference systems use voice-activated switchers that shift the screen image to the person speaking. Use the mute button when you're not speaking to avoid dizzying screen shifts. Also, wait until a person is done speaking before you chime in.

- Adapted from the Wisconsin Educational Communications Board Website

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Ask These Questions Before You Show Up to Give Your Presentation

If you are asked to give a speech or presentation to a new group, talk to the meeting planner well in advance of the event and make sure to ask these four questions:

1. What would you like your attendees to say, think, or do differently at the end of the presentation? This simple question will help you focus your presentation around the key issues facing your organization. The best speeches drive the audience to take action. You can't do this if you don't know what action they need to take.

2. Are there any sensitive issues or areas to avoid? This could save you a lot of embarassment. For example, you may want to stay away from Pee Wee Herman jokes if the company is undergoing a big sexual harassment scandal.

3. Who are the other speakers? It's always good to know who the "competition" is. Also, if they're people with, you can try to tie yor presentation to theirs.

4. How are the other speakers supporting the objectives? This will ensure that you aren't up there just repeating something that someone right before you already covered in detail.

- Adapted from Successful Meetings

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Heading Off Job Burnout

With growing company layoffs, the demise of dot-com ventures and increased pressures in the workplace, it's no wonder most adults cite work as their #1 source of stress. Taking time off isn't the sole cure when you're heading for job burnout. You may also have to be more proactive on the job:

Keep your skills sharp and up-to-date.
Career advisors say that workers often burn out because their jobs are boring, undesirable or below their abilities. It's important to invest in training, seminars and other activities that hone your skills. That way you'll have the skills necessary to move into a position or job in the company that's more suited to your skill level and interests.

Let decision makers know your value.
If your boss doesn't know how good you are, you won't be in a position to negotiate for better hours or even for time off to rejuvenate. Collect proof of your accomplishments and contributions and let the right people know about them.

- Adapted from Newsday

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Tip Of The Month!

Make every call a $200,000 call.

Pretend that someone is about to call you and interview you for that job that pays $200,000 a year. How would you answer the phone? How would you sit? What would your attitude be? No doubt, you would be on your best, most professional behavior and would do everything possible to impress the person on the other end of the line. This is how you should handle every call. Your phone manners tell people a lot about you, so try to treat every person you deal with the same way you would treat that "$200,000 caller."

- Adapted from Telephone Tips that Sell, by Art Sobczak (Business By Phone, Inc)

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