the Soviet career fair
I went to a job fair yesterday. I hate job fairs. It cost $2100 for a small table in a crowded room, where the jobseekers had to stand in line outside to get in because, even with all those recruiters paying over two grand a pop to exhibit, they hadn’t bothered to rent a room of sufficient size. What a freakin’ racket.
Last year at the same event, my manager decided to take a little initiative and start talking to the people standing around outside. The organizers got angry and told her to stop, saying it wasn’t fair to the other people who had paid to be there. (Um, their lack of creativity is unfair to them?) For the record, once those attendees got inside, they sought my boss out to thank her for trying to help them. They were there to find jobs, and she was trying to give them jobs, until the organizers of the JOB FAIR stepped in. Whatev.
Anyway, here are just a couple of other scattered thoughts about job fairs-
- If you’re going to try to sell yourself to a roomful of people who might be interested in you as a potential employee, and you’re not in a creative field… maybe you don’t want to bring the purse with the blinged-out Playboy Bunny logo on it.
- I realize the black suit is the foundation of the Serious Professional Wardrobe, but is it really THAT much more popular than navy blue and pinstripes? (Full Disclosure: I own exactly one suit. It’s charcoal grey with pink pinstripes, and bows on the pockets. It is not a Serious Professional Suit, because I don’t want to work with people who expect a Serious Professional. Life is too short.)
- If you go to a job fair, bring a big tote bag. Job fair organizers are cheap and are likely to provide you with a substandard bag, but everyone there is going to have schwag and brochures and stuff. Also, bring something to put recruiters’ business cards into.
- Speaking of, why don’t more recruiters bring business cards to job fairs? You don’t have to give them to people you don’t want to talk to, but if you meet someone good, you want them to be able to find you again.
- If you’re charging $2100 per table at your job fair, maybe you want to make sure that the breakfast pastries you provide the recruiters (which are really important, by the way) aren’t so stale that the croissants make a THUNK! sound if you drop one on the table.
- I get total tchotchke envy at these things. The MISF used to have really cool and fun tchotchkes, but lately they’ve edged more toward boring stuff like Post-It cubes and calculators and stuff. So when I see another company with cool schwag, I try to arrange a schwag-exchange so I can come home with the cool stuff.
All in all, I talked to one person who I can likely put to work. She was the first person I talked to, and she got my hopes up, only to have them dashed on the rocks of people who either don’t do what I specialize in, or who are unemployed for a reason obvious to everyone but them. Sigh.