Jobs Fair: Be Prepared

Job fairs are a great way to shop for new job opportunities, network and make personal contacts with recruiters at various organizations.

Here are some techniques recommended by experts to ensure that your performance at the fair doesn't turn into a circus:

Do some scouting. If you've never been to a job fair, attend the next one that comes to your city for observational purposes. Pay attention to recruiters and fellow job seekers to pick up some pointers on how to dress, how to approach a company's booth appropriately and how to successfully work the room.

Do some research. Find out which companies will be represented and learn about them in advance through corporate Web sites or other tools. The more you know, the more you can converse with the company representative in the booth and the more memorable you will be. You will also appear much more professional than unprepared job seekers who make the mistake of starting off their conversations with company representatives by asking, "What does your company do?"

Deliver your key messages quickly. Interviewers are very busy, so don't waste their time. Work on a "sound bite" that says what your skills are, the type of work that interests you and the kind of company with which you want to associate.

Plan some questions. If you have additional time, be ready to ask intelligent questions. Ask how departments are organized and how your skills might be utilized within the framework of the company. Also show you know something about the company by asking questions about a recent product release, acquisition or other relevant news. And make sure to ask the interviewer what he or she likes best about the corporate culture to better assess if this company is right for you.

Get the interviewer's business card. If an interview goes well, you will want to follow up with a letter that reinforces the points you made and the facts you learned. If you made a good impression at the fair, the interviewer probably has made a note to that effect and will remember that you passed his or her on-site screen.

Take advantage of the obvious. Sometimes recruiters will post job openings at their booth and provide written information. Grab all of the information you can on site before you get in line for an interview so you won't waste precious time discussing the obvious.

Dress appropriately. You are going to a job interview, so dress the part. Break out the business attire and shine your shoes. It's better to error on the side of the conservative than to be too casual.

Show your pearly whites. Smile when you meet the interviewer. Give a firm handshake. (If you are prone to sweaty palms, bring a handkerchief to use as a towel.) Keep breath mints on hand and make eye contact.
Be organized. Bring plenty of resumes with you. Keep them in a nice folder so you don't get fingerprints all over them. Have a notebook for memos to yourself.

Avoid the shopping spree. Many companies give out freebies at their booths. It's OK to pick up an item or two, but don't leave the impression that you are shopping for your kids. The main impression you want to make is that you are very interested and very qualified for a job.

Keep lively. The lines may be daunting, but don't fail to maximize this opportunity. Talk to every company that fits your experience and ambitions. If you meet with 20 recruiters, at the end of the day you will know 20 people by name. That sure beats sending a blind resume to "Personnel Director."

Effective Job Search Tips : How to get to the Interview Room?

Landing an interview is becoming as rare these days as a night without a presidential debate.

Take Mike Mayer, a former marketing manager who lives in Cleveland. He's sent out hundreds of résumés but it's been six months since anyone has called him to set up an interview. "I'm looking for a sales or marketing job, and I have extensive international experience, but maybe that's working against me," he surmises.

And A.J., an accounts receivable associate for a property management company, is finding his efforts to leave his firm and embark on a new career in human resources have hit a job-search dead end. In the past three months of sending résumés out, he says, "I have not received a single call."

Welcome to the growing résumé abyss. More and more job seekers are finding they're lost in it, unable to even get a call back from a prospective employer acknowledging they exist despite their credentials or experience.
"It used to be that job seekers were able to take a shotgun approach and hit something," says Kurt Weyerhauser, a recruiting expert with search firm Kensington Stone. But in this economy, he adds, "you have to get beyond the résumé."

There's a host of reasons for the problem, aside from just not being right for the job: a souring economy that's gotten companies to cut back or suspend hiring; résumé overload by recruiters who are inundated by electronic résumés; and a growing desire on the part of hiring managers to hire someone they know, or at least hire someone who's recommended by someone they know.

"If you go back a year ago, people were talking about the war for talent; you don't hear that anymore," says Steve Gross, global leader for consulting firm Mercer. The company recently surveyed 126 U.S. employers and found that 33 percent of them were considering a hiring freeze or cutting back on staff because of the economy. That translates, he says, into a slowdown of the hiring process in general.

While you can't disregard the importance of a well-crafted résumé that's targeted to the individual jobs, unfortunately, it's probably not a sharp enough spear for today's job hunt.

Seriously, folks, you could be the perfect candidate for a job and never get beyond an electronic "thank you" reply for sending your résumé.

Dan Enthoven, founder of job search firm Trovix, conducted a study where he sent out fictitious résumés to companies that he knew were desperate to hire software engineers in Silicon Valley. The résumés included all the right credentials and background needed for each specific job posted on company sites, including degrees from none other than top engineering schools such as Stanford and MIT, just to make the candidates even more appealing.

Out of 35 of these perfect résumés sent, only seven received e-mails saying, "We'd like to talk to you," Enthoven says. "That was shocking."

If the perfect candidates out there have only a one in five chance to get called back, it's not good news for someone who may not be a perfect match or someone trying to break into a new career.

What's happened to the hiring world, Enthoven surmises, is recruiters just assume there is no one good to be found among the avalanche of résumés they receive with every job posting.

I know, this sounds unfair, but I suppose we're dealing with human nature here. No one really believes you can find a needle in the haystack, and who has time to search for a needle anyway?

So what we get is a so-called "trust" economy, Weyerhauser says.

"We give an advantage to those candidates who are being referred by people we already know and respect," he explains. "For instance, a candidate who is referred by a well-regarded current employee is much more likely to be invited to an interview than a candidate we know nothing about who blindly sent in a résumé."

The hard part is getting an employee to recommend you. One way to do this is throw a party.

I'm not kidding. Weyerhauser figures you probably know someone right now who knows someone at a company you might be right for.

Invite 30 people and have them invite some people, and before you know it you'll have a sea of connections. Ask your guests, do they know anybody? Provide them with some food and libations, of course, so it doesn't totally seem as if you're only trolling only for a job -- and have fun for goodness sake. Nothing's worse than a cranky job seeker. You need positive vibes to kick your networking into overdrive.

Now, just asking friends if they know someone at a particular company or industry may not always be enough. Check out your friends' LinkedIn or Facebook connections, for example, and see for yourself if there might be a networking fit. Typically, Weyerhauser notes, people don't realize how their connections might work for your job search. Take the initiative here.

Another strategy is to make yourself well-known in an industry by writing an article for trade publications or authoring a blog.
Weyerhauser offered a great example of a guy who wrote a well-read marketing blog.When he called a company he was interested in working for, the manager who answered the phone knew exactly who he was because he was an avid reader of his blog. He ended up getting a plum job at the firm, he adds.

Calling a company or stopping by to introduce yourself is always a great idea. Don't make yourself a pest, but try to connect with the hiring manager so your résumé doesn't get lost on the desk of someone in human resources.

At the very least, go to LinkedIn, or one of the other networking sites out there, and try to find managers or employees, or even former staffers, at a particular company you're interested in and send them an e-mail.
And let's not totally disregard résumés and cover letters.

Abhay Padgaonkar, a management consultant, says sending out 200 résumés at once is what he calls the "spray and pray" approach. So he advises job seekers focus, focus, focus their résumés.
"It's one thing to think that you are right for the job, it's entirely another to be able to understand the requirements of the job and have your résumé and qualifications demonstrate unequivocally that you are, in fact, right for the job," he adds.

Look at each job individually, he says, look at what's required and read between the lines.
For example, have you done negotiations before? If so, explain what you did and how successful you were in your résumé and in the cover letter.

And, Padgaonkar stresses that you have to sing your own praises. "Many times we are blind to our own accomplishments, so get someone to help you point those out," he says.

"Hiring managers spend less than a minute looking at a résumé. If you don't stand out, you end up in the circular file," he concludes.