All students would love to get an interview from a career fair conversation. How much you will get out of the career fair depends on how much you put in. Suggestions for your objectives and strategy below:
If this is your first ever career fair, the most important is to know what happens at the fair
- Carefully study the program on the conference website before you go there
- Decide which company tables, talks, events you want to go to so you can use your time well
- Have realistic objectives
- Perhaps your objective is to learn more about these companies, what questions they’re asking, pick up their materials, so you can study what they care about, so you can pitch more effectively later
- Many conferences have resume review. Stop by there if you haven’t had a few people review your resume already
- Your secondary objective would be to converse with the companies. But you need to have your “pitch” and career story ready.
- Strategize
- If you don’t have your story ready to “sell”, spend time initially walking around the career fair to listen in on how others are pitching and talking to the company representatives, especially if there are American students
- Review the list of companies — start with the companies you care least about and work your way to the companies you care most about
- You should try to hit your target companies at the beginning of the second or third day, when the company representatives are most sharp and closer to the end, so they will more likely remember you