Career Fair Keepsake - This is It!?

Some of the Career Services/SSC Crew

While the March 1st Career Fair is long past, the impressions made on both our students and the recruiters who attended will remain. This being likely my final OIT Career Fair as an office assistant here at Career Services, I made it a point to really work hard to get a good feel for how this Career Fair would be received.

We decided to switch up the format of this Career Fair just a bit, and I believe the changes will stick for future fairs. This time, we required students to register to attend. The change was inspired by multiple factors, and everyone hoped that it would remedy some issues from the past. This Career Fair would look less like an Information Fair and more like a proper Career Fair.

One of the most common accounts of negative feedback from recruiters over the years has been the lack of preparedness of our students come the day of Career Fair. Previously, it wasn't uncommon to see students showing up wearing t-shirts and jeans (and sometimes even kilts). The lack of professional attire would be accompanied by an unsurprisingly low number of resumes in circulation, and recruiters tend to frown at this fact.

Recruiters come to our Career Fairs looking to find potential future employees, and what they've seen in the past from a professional point of view, overall, hasn't been great. Requiring our students to register and have resumes prepared before the fair was a good step toward ensuring a more prepared group of students. This fair, undoubtedly, was considerably more impressive than fairs of the past.

Everyone was dressed professionally and came prepared with resumes to hand out to the attending recruiters. And those recruiters noticed. Every recruiter I talked to mentioned how prepared our students were this time. Sure, we had fewer overall attendees, but the quality of those who attended shined through.

Rentrak Corporation - here for the first time!

While, in the past, our students' Career Fair preparedness has been something to improve, one thing hasn't changed: OIT students are good at what they do. Recruiters return to our Career Fairs every year and say the same thing: OIT churns out quality professionals consistently. This feels great to hear no matter how many times I hear it, and it pleases me to boast about it every time.

First-time attendee, MasterBrand Cabinets, Inc, sent recruiters - one of which had this to say: "Overall: Very Good - Having the students do resumes, cards and appearance made a very good impression of your school. We were very happy to have been a part of today's job fair. Thank You"

No, thank you, MBCI, for the feedback, and for reassuring us that our students did a good job!

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Garmin AT is a regular at OIT Career Fairs

I love chatting it up with recruiters, no doubt. But the Career Fairs aren't just for them. Our students' satisfaction is just as important to us, if not more-so. I try to talk to a few students during each Career Fair, also. Usually the conversation degenerates to typical small-talk, but the impression that I've gotten from students in the past is that there weren't many opportunities presented by the recruiters. Recruiters would come and say "check out our website for job opportunities" or "we aren't currently hiring", and that doesn't make students very happy.

This Career Fair, somehow, turned out quite different. Most of the students I talked to mentioned to me that there were, in fact, more recruiters hiring for specific jobs or internships. Hearing this makes me happy for our students, as that little fact itself is a huge confidence booster for those who will be graduating in the near future. And while this isn't necessarily a direct result of our requiring students to register, that requirement could lead to more students having a greater chance at getting one of the jobs, or at least interviews with the companies who they spoke to.

One thing that is a direct result of the registration requirement, which students were very pleased with, is a much more relaxed atmosphere. Despite everyone being dressed professionally, and being more focused on scoring jobs, the smaller number of students circulating through allowed recruiters to offer more time to talk to individual students. This springs a ton of benefits for each student.

Mentor Graphics' Eric Campbell chatting with a student

Often times, when starting up a conversation with someone who you mean to make a good impression with, it's easy to tense up. Then you forget your name, what you wanted to talk about, any questions you may have already had prepared, and then you pass out. If you can make it past the passing out part, which most of us do, you can start to relax, get into a rhythm, and communicate more effectively.

In previous Career Fairs, there was no time to find that rhythm. In many cases, it was a get-in, say your name, ask a question, and then the recruiter would move on to the next guy kind of deal. This Career Fair was considerably different. I saw students chatting it up with recruiters for tens of minutes at a time, and as I found out, it was very casual chatting, not necessarily related to any particular job. This is called networking, and it's a great thing, and I'm glad our students had an opportunity to do it. Recruiters will remember someone they had a casual conversation with, and they're more likely to remember to pass the word onto hiring managers.

I even noticed some recruiters providing input on students' resumes!

Even though the Career Fair is meant to close up at 4:00pm, in the past, we'd have employers fully packed up and ready to leave BY 4:00pm. This was always a little disconcerting. This year, as Jan mentioned to me, is the first year that a Career Fair has gone all the way up to (and past) 4:00pm. Multiple employers were still talking to students at 4:00pm, and I even stayed afterward to talk to one of them. This, I think, is another great result of our registration policy. Whoever came up with the idea should get a cookie!

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Well, that's it for this post! I might have a little more to write about if we get more feedback forms in from recruiters. We'll see!