Career Fair Keepsake!

So OIT held it's annual Fall Career Fair this past Tuesday. I worked the fair from start to finish, and really built an appreciation for what goes on throughout the day. This was probably the smallest career fair I had attended since my Freshman year at OIT, but it was still tons of work and fun!

I got in to work about 10 minutes before 8am, and started doing my usual settling-in routine; checking new job posts, email, calendar... things like that. Not long after I had finished, Alicia showed up and opened the doors. It was time to do some REAL work. Jan briefed us on the day first, and then we set off finalizing pre-preparation preparations. We still had badges to have printed and put together for the recruiters, signs to put up, and table cloths to unfold.

My initial impression of the table cloths was dismal. A lot of them had holes in them despite it being their first use. More on this later.

Fast forward to when recruiters started showing up. I wasn't there. Jan had sent me back to sit in the office. I did return later to help greet more recruiters, though. A lot of them had some really cool setups, and hopefully I'll be able to post some photos of them later. At some point, students started to show up... but it wasn't time to start yet. Unfortunately, it seems we didn't have as much faculty support as we would have liked, and students weren't able to attend because of class. Definitely something to improve on!

The problem with students showing up early isn't really turning them away, but figuring out who is a student in the first place! A lot of the companies had sent pretty young recruiters, and it was never very obvious who was which.

We had some down time after the recruiters returned from the luncheon. Apparently it was closed down early, so I took the chance to talk to some of the recruiters who were representing companies I was interested in. Instead of just getting down to business, I decided to chat it up and actually connect on a more personal basis. I think this is the essence of networking, and it was really nice not having a line of people behind me breathing down my neck for their turn.

Once we opened, students started to trickle in. Alicia and I had two excellent volunteers to help us out. So first, I'd like to thank those guys for their time! Our goal was to have students enter the door prize drawing and fill out some surveys when they were finished talking to recruiters. We tallied about 240 students attending over the course of the four hours!

The initial rush was a little disappointing. Students were dressed as they would dress every day rather than how you'd expect them to dress at an interview. I was losing hope in this year's turnout, because of the smaller group of employers and the weak student representation. I knew from previous years, though, that the biggest rush would be some time around 2:30 or 3. And I was not disappointed. Reams of students rolled through, and our duo of volunteers presented their spiels to every single one. Not only were there lots of them, but they were mostly dressed to impress - these were the people who really wanted jobs.

At some point I noticed we were missing a couple of recruiters. Overlooking the US Army's massive tent and big-screen, I could see some empty tables. We also had some packets that weren't handed out yet. CPI showed up and revealed the greatest blunder of the day! We had lost their packet... very literally. I can still vividly remember looking through the packet and seeing the name badge inside of it, but have no recollection of what happened to it after that. It's still bugging me today.

I mentioned the US Army's tent in the previous paragraph. This is something impressive to me. It makes me wonder what portion of a company/organization's assets go toward researching recruiting. Some of the smaller companies had little more than a piece of poster board, while some of the larger companies had tall retractable signs and their own table cloths. Sure, the extravagence of the booths should scale with the size of the company, but it'd be interesting to see if the recruiting efforts extend past big signs and table cloths.

I had a chance to walk around again and talk with some more recruiters. You can really tell some of them are highly enthusiastic about recruiting from OIT, and on the flip side, you can see when some of them are just there because they were told to come. It's so easy to see, that sometimes it's even a turn-off for me, as a student. I want to go to a company that loves OIT grads, and I'm sure other OIT students think the same way. The easiest way to generate student interest, in my opinion, is to send down an OIT alum with your recruiters. We give them sweet blue lanyards that say "OIT Alumni" so they're easy to single out. "Seeing is believing" is such a true statement here, and there's no better way to show students that you hire from OIT.

On a side note, I snatched up some sweet SWAG (Stuff We All Get) after talking with some recruiters. GE brought some great lime-green frisbees. I got one. Schweitzer Engineering Labratories brought some killer retractable earbuds. I got a pair. Mentor Graphics handed out tons of awesome track bags. I got one in blue and one in green. I skipped all of the usual pens and stuff, though - my backpack has no open pen holders.

Eventually the rush settled down, and we were all able to have a seat. We were all getting tired of saying the same thing over and over, and we could finally relax a little bit.

It wasn't long before the recruiters started packing up. A lot of them had left before we had a chance to see them off, and only a few of them returned completed surveys. We appreciate those recruiters who spent some time on them! They're helpful in so many ways! Next time we'll make sure to point the surveys out when we hand out packets.

The employers had all left, and that meant clean-up time! This was easily the most satisfying part of the whole day. Alicia and I complained to Jan about the horrid quality of the table cloths, and she gave us the go ahead to trash them! Oh, was this a great moment. I grabbed up as many as I could and, all at once, shoved them into the recycling cart. No more hole-stained, fold-ridden, oversized paper towels in my near future. I am content.

But I still can't figure out where the CPI packet went.

Tips on Dressing for your Interview!

Interviewing can become the make-or-break for any job-hopeful. Do poorly on the interview, and you'll soon find yourself back in the hunt. But the interview isn't all about answering questions. The way you present yourself is just as important as knowing your stuff.

So, Alicia was surfing around one day when she found this GQ Feature, Project Upgrade: How to dress for the big interview. I took a look at this article, and it really does bring up some great points. Behind all of the corny photos, outrageous clothing prices, some strange jobs, and the fact that the feature is directed to men, there's a solid message for everyone!

Surprisingly, dressing yourself correctly can be quite a challenge if you've previously turned a blind eye to it. This feature shows it perfectly. It follows seven dudes who are getting ready for interviews at their prospective jobs. GQ says each guy has flaws in his attire, and since I'm not here to straight up repeat the things they wrote, I'll paraphrase.

Know your role. Know your interviewer's. Dress accordingly. Power-dressing, as some may call it, is a no-no. Don't give the interviewer the impression that you think you're better than him. You aren't the boss, yet, so don't try to trump him with your suit.

Be clean. It doesn't really matter how long you've been sporting a goatee, you need to nix it. It will grow back, anyway. Show your interviewer that you know how to groom yourself, and that will, in turn, show them that you're all about business.

Tone it down. There's no need to slap your interviewer in the face with the brightest colors you can muster. Color is great! But don't over do it... and make sure you match.

Size it up! Poor-fitting clothes can undo all of the points above. Invest the extra time and money to get your suit tailored, or find something that fits from the get-go. It's all about clean lines and minimal boxy-ness. Besides, if you get this job, you'll be able to get all the cool things you had to give up for this suit, right?

And lastly, be confident! Alright, that has little to do with the actual clothes you're wearing, but an interviewer can see right through the confident suit to an unconfident personality. That's what they're getting paid for.

That's about it. Hopefully this shed a little light on your interview-dressing woes. Sooooo know your role, be clean, tone it down, size it up, be confident, and then all you need is a good set of answers and a little luck! So here it is - good luck!