BiPartition

Saturday, February 6th, 2010

Getting Real Interviews at Job Faires

Standing out at a Job Faire can make a difference in your search. Career Faires are starting to pick up, and a major job search company is running some nice ones, called Targeted Job Fairs. At a San Jose Area Career Faire in January, 10 companies as showing up, and Dice has 82 job fairs scheduled for 2010 across the United States.

How do you compete at a Career Fair? The competition can be substantial, but you can help yourself stand out from the herd with advance preparation. At AA-Careers, we have a simplified six-step process to prepare. Plan to go? Here’s how to prepare:

First, research the organizations that are going and pick your targets. Use the World Wide Web to check out the companies that are there before you go. Go to their sites and see if they have their jobs posted. Pick a limited number to go after, and get ready to spend about an hour researching each one. It’s hard to do more than seven in a day, and five or six is a much more reasonable target. For each company, 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 organization is looking for. Create a mapping of your accomplishments and skills to the prerequisites of the job. Make the nomenclature match. If the hiring company calls customers "clients", your resume should do the same thing. The achievements should be written in the style of the hiring company.

Third, create a ‘thumbnail sales pitch’ for each likely organization/position combination. Write down a sixty second ‘thumbnail’ that you can repeat out loud showing why you are a good candidate for that job. You’ll use this in your resume and when you meet the team from the company at the job booth.

Fourth, modify your resume for each opportunity. The objective on your resume should exactly match the position you’re aiming for. 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 prerequisites. 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 simple to see that you’re a match based on your resume.

Fifth, practice your ‘mini-sales-pitch’. Collect your research and the resume for each spot - bring a couple of copies for each – and put each in a understandably labeled folder. Keep them in a light briefcase or folio.

Finally, dress and prepare as if you’re doing on-site interviews. Dress well and be properly groomed. Avoid strong cologne or perfume…use any cologne or perfume meagerly, if at all.

Remember to smile, and good hunting!

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 6th, 2010 at 10:06 am and is filed under Advertising Industry, The Marketing Way. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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