Standing out at a Career Faire can make a difference in your career search. Job Fairs are starting to pick up, and Dice is running some nice ones, called Targeted Job Fairs. At a San Jose Area Job Faire in early 2010, 10 companies as showing up, and a major job search company has 82 job fairs scheduled for this year across the United States.
How do you get to the real interviews at a Job Fair? The rivalry can be substantial, but you can help yourself surpass from the gang with early homework. At AA-Careers, we have a straight-forward six-step process to prepare. Planning to go? Here’s how to prepare:
First, investigate the companies that are going and pick your targets. Use the World Wide Web to research the companies that are there ahead of time. Go to their websites and see if they have their jobs posted. Pick a tenable number to target, and get ready to spend an hour or more researching each one. It’s hard to do more than 7 in a day, and three or four is a much more reasonable target. For each company, you want to know: recent news, key product lines, and exectuve names. Try to see if you know anyone at the target companies. You’ll end up with a page or two of research for each company/job.
Second, if there are job postings on the web, read them to see what the organization is looking for. Create a mapping of your achievements and skills to the demands of the job. Make the nomenclature match. If the hiring organization 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 organization/position combination. Write down a 90 second ‘thumbnail’ that you can repeat verbally depicting why you are a key candidate for that job. You’ll use this in your resume and when you meet the company at the job kiosk.
Fourth, modify your resume for each job type. The objective on your resume should exactly match the position you’re want. 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 Career Faire, 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 match based on your resume.
Fifth, rehearse your ‘mini-sales-pitch’. Collect your research and the resume for each opportunity - bring a couple of copies for each – and put each in a intelligibly tagged folder. Keep them in a lightweight briefcase or folio.
Finally, dress and prepare as if you’re doing on-site interviews. Dress nicely and be properly groomed. Avoid strong cologne or perfume…use any eau de cologne or perfume sparingly, if at all.
Remember to smile, and good hunting!