Career Fair Mistakes

I’ve caught several articles in the past few weeks about career fairs and how to make the most of them. I particularly liked a piece by Tracey Minor who suggests using job fairs as practice interviews among other things. Throughout my career in the staffing and recruiting industry, I’ve been involved in many, many job fairs representing Spherion and seeking prospective employees. Although there are many new, innovative venues to use for job searching (such as this blog), career fairs still offer candidates a number of benefits, not the least of which is landing a job. I won’t list the benefits here, there are a number of articles you can check out that cover them very well including "Guerrilla Tactics for Job Fairs," and Ian Ybarra’s post with three important tips.

I do have a collection of “what not to do’s” that I can share with you. They are:

1) Never attend without a resume
2) Please don’t hand out a resume with errors/misspellings
3) If you’re not dressed for the part, don’t go. Remember, this is an interview
4) Approaching employers/booths when it is overcrowded – you’ll never stand out – wait until they are less busy
5) Don’t drop off and run – avoid the urge to simply hand out as many resumes as you can – that isn’t the goal. Make sure you take the time to talk to the employers, ask questions and appear genuinely interested and not just another company on the receiving end of your resume rampage.
— Tim Gorman is a group vice president for Spherion, a leading provider of recruiting and staffing services. He oversees the operations of 28 staffing offices in Central Florida.