I told myself that I would never do it again, but I did.......I attended another career fair. You'd think I would learn my lesson the first or second time. I don't know what prompted me to go today other than the fact that I was HOPING that it would be different than all the other fairs I had attended...I was sorely disappointed.Imagine my surprise when I arrived at the Embassy Suites downtown at 9:50am (it started at 10:00am) and there was already a line of people out the door and down the sidewalk! I had only put an hour and a half's worth of money in the meeter for parking!
This was unlike anything I had ever seen before. I'll give monster.com props for organization, but it took me 25 minutes before I was even speaking with a company! And I was speaking with companies for only 20 minutes.
There were quite a few good companies represented: Principal Financial, Wells Fargo, McDonald's, The State of Iowa, Mrs. Clark's Foods, CDS Global, Aviva...but not enough of them. Only 27...and it was the same old routine:
1. "We're not taking resumes, please visit our website to apply."
2. "Please go to our website to view openings"
3. There were no positions I was interested in applying for
4. There were positions I was interested in applying for and I already have applied for them
So, this begs the question, "Are Career Fairs Worth Our Time?" I say it depends on what you're looking for and if you've got anything else better to do with yourself. I didn't have anything else going on today, so I thought I would check it out. If you had a background in IT, Production Work or Housekeeping, you probably struck gold today. Ran into a guy with a background in nuclear engineering - wonder if he had any luck.
How about you? Were you able to make it to monster.com's career fair? If so, what did you think? What is your take on career fairs in general?
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I too attended the Monster.com Job Fair. This was the first job fair I had attended in a very long time, so I had a limited and fuzzy idea of what to expect. I would have liked to see more companies participating. It would also have been helpful to see a list of exhibitors before the event so I could prepare better.
ReplyDeleteI’m looking for a management position in marketing & advertising, and perhaps sales. Those types of jobs were scarce. I got to the Embassy Suites early so I was one of the first in the door. I stopped to talk to just about all of the companies and make sure I covered everyone. That took less than two hours.
I do see one advantage to attending, and that is strengthening some of my contacts. There were at least three people exhibiting that I had talked to at the various networking groups: Pink Slip, Lemon Aid & Net2Work. Those conversations helped me get some leads on other places to check for jobs.
So, my take is: If you’re unemployed, you have the time, so attend the job fairs. Even if 99% of the companies don’t fit your search, it only takes that one to click and land a job. Oh, and don’t forget the free lemonade.
Joe Burklund
Urbandale, IA
Suzanne,
ReplyDeleteGood to hear about your take on the Job Fair. I am still stuck doing homewoork. I'm consumed with it!
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