A Word on Career Fairs

A little while back, Seth Godin wrote a post on his blog about career fairs and how they were essentially useless as they did not help you launch a career and they were anything but fair. You can read the full post here, but in short the post talks about how the jobs offered at career fairs are the “wholesale filling of average jobs with people trying to be average” and the fact that “By the time a job opening hits the career fair, it’s a job you don’t want. And by the time a job seeker is walking down the aisles, standardized resume in hand, it might be too late for her to find a job that’s worthy of her.”

He ends the post by asking for a new type of career fair, “one that’s selective, interactive, long-term and both career and fair.” Seeing how the majority of this blog’s reader base are entrepreneurial students or entrepreneurs looking to hire fresh talent, I thought it would be wise to address the issue.

I understand what he is saying in general about career fairs. A lot of the career fairs I have been to have been full of less than appealing positions in otherwise well known and respected companies.

Here is why I believe career fairs are not the best way to find an opening: all of the best jobs are taken by those who “go to the job”, while those who wait for the job to come to them (come career fairs) get whatever mediocre openings are left over after the ones who took initiative had their pick.

So if the career fair is not the way to find the right job, then what is? In my experience and those of my peers who have landed entry level jobs at top financial, technology, and consulting companies including Goldman Sachs, Google, JP Morgan, McKinsey, and others, the only way to find the “right job” is to go after it and not wait for it to come to you.

Now, “go after it” may not be the concrete answer you were looking for so here are some specifics straight from individuals who have landed these top jobs.

The most important part of getting the job you want is not network with the right people and connect with them early. If you are waiting until a career fair to network you are waiting too long. It will serve you much better if you take the time to find out exactly what it is that you want to do and where you want to do it and contact individuals with your “dream job” as mentors and advisers before you actually start the job search process. It will surprise you how many people will be willing to help guide you and help connect you with opportunities you would never find at a career fair down the road when you are looking to apply for your first job or switch careers.

Professors are also great resources for students as often times they have a number of connections within the industries they teach about/work with and building a close relationship with a professor or faculty member will give you access to additional possible openings. Obviously professors at the university you are associated with are the easiest to network with, but even professors at other universities are often willing to help.

Lastly aside from currently employed individuals and professors, a last group of individuals worth networking with are individuals who cover the industries you are interested in for the press, mainstream or not, and these are the individuals most familiar with the inner workings of the industry and are also extremely well connected.

Aside from networking, “going after it” involves taking an initiative and looking for jobs as soon as they are posted and jobs that may not even exist yet. The first of these suggestions is important when looking for opportunities at large firms. You need to filter through this companies’ employment listings and apply as soon as new appealing opportunity appears as these openings fill be full by the time the company hits the job fair circuit.

As far as jobs that don’t exist, this tactic can be effective when targeting an opportunity at a start-up company. Everyone has a unique set of skills and if you can find a problem with the way a start-up is doing something and show them how you can fix it, the flexibility and personal nature of hiring within the start-up community increases your chances of finding an opportunity.

If this post could be summed up in a few sentences it is this: The “perfect job fair” doesn’t exist. If you want the perfect job you have to make it happen, not wait for it to come to you. The ways to do this is network early and often and search for jobs in traditional AND unconventional ways, whether it be mining online listings or creating your own job and pitching companies.