A job fair isn't an excuse to "trick or treat" from table to table.
This is the time of year when campus career centers are beginning to hold job fairs for graduating students. Job fairs dot the calendar outside the ivied halls as well.
Typically, employers come with goodies - pens, mini-flashlights, candy, stress balls, magnets - all kinds of merchandise imprinted with their logos to help job shoppers remember them.
The stuff is there for the taking, but fair attendees shouldn't grab so much that they look like they went shopping.
Job fairs are a first look at each other. Job offers are rarely, if ever, made on the spot. But, as a first-step vehicle for employers to collect qualified résumés, job fairs shouldn't be treated too cavalierly.
A handful of candy is unlikely to make or break a job candidacy. But what if the person staffing the booth takes an immediate disdain to the goodie grabber and deep-sixes his or her résumé on the spot?
It's little things like that, and bigger things like these, that make first impressions:
- Dress professionally, or at least neatly, cleanly or in the manner of others who hold that job.
- Be polite to everyone.
- Don't eat or schlep beverages around with you.
- Pare down the things you're carrying to a folder with an easily accessible stack of résumés so that you don't have to fumble or juggle possessions.
- Have a one-minute spiel ready to tell recruiters who you are, but don't expect to go into much depth with the representatives from any organizations. A job fair isn't the place to review your life history or goals.
- Target the employers where your experience, course work or interests make you a good fit.
- Keep a record of where you left résumés. Get business cards if you can; it will help to have names for follow-up correspondence.
And students, just because it's only the fall, don't think it's too early to start preparing for what you're going to do come May.
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(Diane Stafford is the workplace and careers columnist at The Kansas City Star. Her blog, workspacekc.typepad.com, includes daily posts about job-related issues of wide interest. She can be reached at stafford@kcstar.com.)
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