When I went through my unemployment phase, I must’ve went to about 5 or 6 job fairs. I remember always being excited about each one, feeling that an opportunity to speak to people face to face, plus the ability to choose the companies I wanted to talk to, was a slam dunk. In reality, not only did I never get a job offer from a company I talked to at a job fair but I never even received a call back! Actually that’s not totally true, I did receive a call from Primerica which was a total scam being that they discussed a position that had nothing to do with any of my skills or education. They basically called every single person who gave them a resume. Other than that, all the job fairs amounted to nothing but a bunch of wasted resume paper and a lot of frustration.
So why do I think the job fairs were a waste of time for me? Like anything, there’s probably a bunch of different factors. One of them has to do with unrealistic expectations. We all hear about the job fair love stories about the unemployed job seeker getting hired on the spot. Does it happen sometimes? Sure. But the majority of the time job fairs turn into a glorified resume collecting experience. The recruiters there enjoy talking with most of the candidates to provide more information about the company, but finding quality candidates that are ready to hire on the spot comes few and far between.
This leads me to my second factor in why job fairs weren’t very successful for me, I wasn’t a standout candidate. While I had good skills, a good attitude, and great work ethic my work experience to that point wasn’t really eye opening. That is part of the mystery of job fairs. Candidates that are strong enough to have success at a job fair are the ones that really don’t need to go to the job fair. For instance, now that my work experience is as strong as it is, I would go straight to the companies I was interested in working for and submitting my resume directly to them. Going to a job fair might be a big waste because 90% of the companies there may be ones that I’m not interested in anyway.
There are some that can find success at job fairs, but I think for most people they are a big waste of time. If you’re in a position that you need to go to find job prospects, there’s a good chance that you may not have strong enough qualifications to make it worthwhile. If you want a silver lining, going to a lot of job fairs can give you experience talking to recruiters and give you practice at selling yourself and being more outgoing. If you look at it from that perspective, it can be beneficial for you. But if you go thinking you’re going to come out with a job, you might be in for a big disappointment.
