Standing out at a Career Faire 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 Bay Area Job Fair in January, 10 companies as showing up, and a major job search company has 82 career fairs scheduled for 2010 across the US.
How do you rise above the crowd at a Career Faire? The competition can be substantial, but you can help yourself jump out from the gang with early planning. At AA-Careers, we have a straight-forward step-by-step process to prepare. Plan to go? Here’s how to prepare:
First, investigate the organizations that are going and pick your objectives. Use the web to research the companies that are there ahead of time. Go to their sites and see if they have their openings posted. Pick a rational number to target, and get ready to spend up to an hour researching each one. It’s hard to do more than seven in a day, and four to six is a much more reasonable target. For each hiring organization, you want to know: key product lines, recent news, and executive 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 openings on the web, read them to see what the hiring manager is looking for. Create a mapping of your achievements and skills to the prerequisites of the job. Make the language match. If the hiring organization calls customers "clients", your resume should do the same thing. The achievements should be written in the style of the hiring organization.
Third, create a ‘thumbnail sales pitch’ for each likely company/position combination. Write down a 90 second ‘thumbnail’ that you can repeat out loud depicting why you are a fantastic prospect for that position. You’ll use this in your resume and when you meet people at the job booth.
Fourth, modify your resume for each position. The objective on your resume should exactly match the job you’re targeting. 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 Fair, the purpose of your resume is a sales tool for you – to get you on-site job interviews. It should be obvious to see that you’re a match based on your resume.
Fifth, dress and prepare as if you’re doing on-site interviews. Dress nicely and be properly groomed. Don’t overdress (this isn’t a date!) and don’t underdress (no jeans or t-shirts, no matter how much you paid for them). Avoid strong cologne or perfume.
Finally, rehearse your ‘mini-sales-pitch’. Collect your research and the resume for each position - bring a couple of copies for each – and put each in a understandably labeled folder. Keep them in a lightweight briefcase or folio.
Remember to smile, and good hunting!
