Is Attending a Job Fair Really Worth It?

From the Wall Street Journal | Feb 16, 2010 | By Henry Chalian

Henry Chalian was a relationship manager at J.P. Morgan before his job was eliminated in May 2009 after seven years with the company. Mr. Chalian, 41, received a masters degree from the London School of Economics in 1995 and is currently completing a certificate of business excellence at Columbia Business School. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

One of the advantages of going to career-related networking events is meeting others who are in the same boat as I am. One person I’ve met during my search compiles a very comprehensive list of New York City events — from the arts to career related events — and emails the list on weekly basis. I was going through the list early last week when I saw a listing for a job fair happy hour organized by Jobnob, career-recruiting site for startups.

I have not been going to any job fairs outside of those at the J.P. Morgan Career Outplacement Center. I have heard nightmare stories about them, from having to wait in long lines to unresponsive recruiters. But since I’m currently doing consulting work at a startup and am strongly considering working at one, I decided to go to this event. The list of companies and the positions they were recruiting for looked very promising with a lot of non-technology positions listed. I was excited.

I arrived at the job fair happy hour around 6 p.m. The entrance to the bar was very crowded, and it took me about 20 minutes to actually walk into the place. Each company had a booth, but most booths were empty. I found it very strange that about ten venture capital firms were added to the original list of companies but not a single one had a representative in their booth. I had reviewed the list and targeted companies that I wanted introduce myself to, but those lines were very long.

Then the company speed round started. By paying $50 to the organizers, 20 companies were given one minute to stand up and make a presentation about their company and the positions they were recruiting for. This actually ended up being very useful. I found out that one of my target companies was not within commuting distance. But it became clear that most of the companies were there to recruit engineers or developers. Some larger companies were in fact openly recruiting tech workers who would be willing to relocate to Silicon Valley. A travel startup was looking for employees who would be willing to be paid by equity only, unless they spoke Portuguese or Italian, because then the position would be salaried along with equity.

After the speed round presentations, I approached the partner of a startup that had indicated they were looking for business development professionals. Even though I tried to engage him in a conversation to find out more about his company and talk about my transferable skills, he was not responsive. He just gave me his card and said for us to link up on LinkedIn, and that if there was any interest he would be in touch. The odd thing was there was no one else waiting to talk to him.

I spoke to another technology recruiter for a large Wall Street startup. He told me of a position that could be a fit on the business side of the company. I left immediately after that without having had a single drink. I checked out their Web site and found a very promising position. I was able to make a connection with their hiring manager through LinkedIn and asked him to make an introduction. I am planning on setting up a networking meeting and will see how it goes from there.

Even though I did get a new lead, clearly I have been on the right track all along and have not missed much by not going to job fairs. It is still all about networking.

Readers, have you recently attended a job fair? Are you finding job fairs useful? Share your experience in the comments section.