<p>My school has a career fair this week and I'm not sure whether I should go. I'm currently a sophomore and am looking for an internship either this summer or in the fall. Would it be a good idea to go? Or are career fairs only for people looking for full time jobs?</p>
<p>I am a freshman and I went to a career fair and its a very good idea to go because you can gain some experience and also they offer internship too.</p>
<p>Does your career center have a (legit) website? For our upcoming fair, ours lists who will be there (so you can prepare ahead of time), as well as what positions they are hiring for.</p>
<p>A good solid chunk of the employers are specifically looking for interns, and not full-time job seekers.</p>
<p>Definitely a good idea to go. Plenty of people get internships through their school career fairs.</p>
<p>What do I need to wear and what do I do at the career fair specifically when it comes to talking with each company?</p>
<p>You wear a suit and should have a pile of resumes (on resume paper). When you arrive, you should be given a booklet showing you where the companies are located, what majors they’re hiring, and if they’re looking for full-time, interns, or both. Go to a booth of a company you’re not interested in at first to understand the process, then start going to companies that interest you.</p>
<p>Basically, each company will have a table and a display describing their company. There will probably be 4 recruiters standing in front of the table with a line of students waiting to talk to each one. When it’s your turn you walk up, shake hands, introduce yourself, and offer the person a resume. Then you make small talk for 3-5 minutes about the company and about yourself. The recruiter will probably take notes on your resume. </p>
<p>It’s a good idea to research companies (even if briefly) before talking to them so that you have something to say that makes you look interested (at least interested enough to google their company). Try to ask questions that flow from what the recruiter just said, but also have some generic questions available in case you are stuck. Maybe something about work-life balance, locations, responsibilities an intern is given, etc.</p>
<p>It’s a mini-job interview, but with 3-5 minutes and talking to 300 students/day, most interviewers only care about your resume, if you’ve shown an interest in the company based on your comments, and if you can communicate well.</p>
<p>If you are at Clemson you can access a list of participating companies here-
[Michelin</a> Career Center - Clemson University](<a href=“http://career.clemson.edu/events/career_fairs/students/index.php]Michelin”>Home-Clemson Center for Career and Professional Development)
There is also a list of companies that will be conducting more formal interviews after the career fair. Take a minute to look at them and, if any looks particularly interesting, be especially thorough researching them. You might make a few notes to glance at before you talk with them so that you can ask a question or two that is specific to work they are doing, for example.</p>
<p>BanjoHitter’s advice about starting with a company you are not really interested in is very good. Also, make sure you look presentable; it is amazing what some students will show up wearing for what is essentially a job interview.</p>
<p>With so many resumes being collected it’s important to stand out. A friend of mine passed along his resume to me which was like a pamphlet (take a sheet of notebook paper, rotate it 90 deg, and fold left to right to get the idea). On the cover was a border with name/major in the middle. In the inside on the left-hand side was a single paragraph (signed at the end) about my career interests and how I could help so and so achieve their goals etc…On the right-hand side was your traditional resume. I printed these on resume paper (obviously) and handed out about 20. Out of the 20 recruiters, only about 12 of them were even looking at resumes. The others just were collecting them, handing out t-shirts, and regurgitating info about their company. Anyway, I received 8 compliments on the layout of the resume. They hadn’t seen a resume like that before. Usually you get the one standard page or at an extreme you get a couple of pages which is a major no no unless you’re an experienced professional. </p>
<p>You get a mixed bag of company representatives at these career fairs - especially from the larger companies. Sometimes it’s younger guys so they can relate to the students better than a senior person, other times it could be hiring managers, or sometimes just HR people that REALLY only know the company at a high level. Because of this you really don’t know where your resume is going to land and what kind of impact the person you’re talking to has on you potentially getting a job. I’ve represented my company at a career fair (manager/director wanted a young engineer to share experiences etc) and i was in no way affiliated with the hiring process other than to filter out resumes that didn’t match our requirements. This is just my opinion, but unless you have some kind of resume with a golden star or you make a big impression on someone directly in line with hiring for a project (not HR people but like a manager or director), your resume is just going to be shuffled into the pile and sorted as such from these fairs. That’s why I thought this resume at least gave me some kind of an advantage to standing out a little more than normal.</p>