When I was still a student, I seldom left career fairs without interviews unless I don’t want them. Back then I was an international student, and many companies hire citizens only. Even then, I could still get 3–4 interviews from speaking around for the first 2 hours in a university career fair. It’s not because I’m lucky, or have a more impressive resume than anyone has. The reason is that I build my own strategy of winning in career fair and it works.
Before the event
A career fair never starts on its first day, it starts 1–2 weeks ahead of time. The only thing I do during this time frame is filtering companies. A midsize event can hold more than 200 employers — you can’t talk to them all clearly. I would pull a list of all attending employers from event main page (you can always find this information if your school values student job searching enough) and start from there. Look into a company’s introduction and visa requirements. Filter out companies who don’t interest you (or don’t sponsor you, unfortunately), and now you would have a employer pool designed just for you.
I only choose 20–25 companies after filtering and prepare talking with them only. They either have a cause or mission which really motivates me, or are in a industry field that interests me. For recruiters, it’s always helpful if you already know their business and feel interested. Affection will be mutual: companies all prefer passionate applicants and will have higher chances to reach out further.
At this time, I submit all my resume into online portal — so system has a record. You’ll still have to go through the same step after talking with recruiters, why not submit everything ahead of time?
During the event
The first 2–3 hours of a career fair is its golden time — no one’s exhausted from overloading information. I never waste this time lining up for big companies — I actually try to avoid talking to big companies at all from career fairs — because they are never short of applicants and you’ll want to use a different networking strategy. I line up directly for any company in my filtered list with a short line. The tip is, the more companies you can talk with in the first 2–3 hours, the more chances you’ll have to receive interviews from some of them.
I have my own way to talk through a recruiter and I call it ‘leading a roadmap conversation’. First I give them my name, major, expected graduation year and desired position (SDE, DS, MLE, etc.) clearly. Then I help them to read my resume , telling them what preparation I did for that desired position. While they are reading my resume, I would point out 1–2 best projects and start talking about their cause, tech stack and results. Lastly, I ask them for further questions, chat a bit, exchange emails and close the conversation.
After the event
If you don’t follow up after talking with recruiters, they would hire those who do follow up with them. I would normally send out an email at the same day of career fair, introduce myself again, say thank you for the conversation, and reattach my resume once more for viewing. Check back with recruiters every 3–4 days seeing if they want to go further with your application.
Si Qi Cao 