The Job Hunt: Job fairs not a good place to find a job
Filed under: Technology, Career
This should come as no surprise to anyone who has been to a job fair: The line at a federal job fair in Atlanta went around the block Thursday morning.
I've written about job fairs on my personal blog about being an unemployed dad, and I've been to a handful since being laid off back in June. But while I've waited in line for 30 minutes, I haven't been in a job fair line that snaked around the block.
According to a CNN story, there were 4,000 to 5,000 people at the job fair in Atlanta, lined up around the building with some of the area in triple lines. More than half of the people standing in line for more than four hours left disappointed or without getting in, the report said.
It took about six hours of waiting to get into the job fair, where many were told to apply for the jobs online.
That's one of the many problems with job fairs. With the national unemployment rate at 7.6%, people are desperate to find work. I think you could hold a job fair every day of the year on just about any block in America and people would line up to get in. It's like holding a "free beer" sign outside a baseball game -- people are going to line up.
I've found that if you can get inside a job fair, and don't want to continue standing in line at the various booths set up by employers, the best thing to do is grab a brochure from the companies you're interested in and go home and apply online. Or better, find out which companies will be there (they're usually listed on the event advertisement), and apply online before the job fair opens.
I've stood in a few of these lines myself over the past six months or so, and have discovered that when I get to the front, some nice person is willing to talk to me for a few minutes, but I usually find out that they don't have openings in the areas I'm qualified for.
For the most part, the job fairs I've been to have openings at the top and the bottom of the skill levels. Either it's a job as an entry-level worker at low pay, or a high-paying job that is highly technical, such as an engineer. I've seen engineers interviewed for jobs on the spot. And there also seems to be plenty of jobs for salespeople or in marketing. If you can sell something, you can probably find a job at one of these fairs.
There are also plenty of schools at these events to woo you back to college so you can upgrade your skills. Job search web sites and companies that can help you find a job are also popular, although I suspect they're more interested in bringing more hits to their website than in finding people jobs right there and then.
I drove about an hour to one of the first job fairs I went to, and quickly realized it was a waste of time. While I appreciated the fact that everyone was trying to be helpful, one woman at one of only a dozen booths asked a question that I thought was unbelievable. After a career on the editorial side of newspapers, I was curious about a sales job for ads. "Why would you want to make such a drastic, downward move in your career?" she asked.
I was dumbfounded and didn't have much of an answer because I didn't want to be rude. "Because I don't have a job," I said. She didn't get it that I was looking for a "job" and not a "career" at this "job fair."
Maybe that's why so many people attend these job fairs. It's a chance at finding something fast without having to do all of the work it takes to establish a career. It's a job that's needed now to pay the bills before the lenders start calling.
Aaron Crowe is an unemployed journalist in the San Francisco Bay Area. Read about his job search at www.AaronCrowe.net
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
2-12-2009 @ 8:59PM
Oleda said...
I attended one job fair last week, or the "jobless fair" as we've come to call it; none of the companies were hiring. When an employer invites multiple companies to their office to assist their soon to be dislocated employees, "we might have something in a few months" or "I'm not really sure what positions we have open" or "we really won't do anything with your resume anyway, " or "we'll be having a layoff soon too" are not the types of things one wishes to hear from "perspective employers." It's also rather unsettling to be handed business cards with nothing more than the company's name and a generic email address. It's like they're purposely not putting a contact person on there because they know you'll never hear from them again. They just want you to email your resume into cyberspace so it can float around in never, never land and make friends with all of the other resumes floating out there. I know there definitely are jobs out there, and some job fairs do have high success rates for the applicants. I'm just saying that the one I went to was horrific.
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2-15-2009 @ 2:31PM
Mike Woolems said...
I've gone through a few periods of unemployment. There have been 2 tremendous time-wasters in my job searches; Job Fairs and Headhunters, or recruiters. I won't waste time on either ever again. I think some companies that participate in Job Fairs are only there because they've been recruited by the Job Fair organizer and they feel they should be present to support the community as a good citizen, even though they don't have openings to fill.
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2-15-2009 @ 3:01PM
kevin said...
The same companies are at every job fair time and time again because their jobs are low paying, high-turnover jobs that continually need to be re-filled.
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2-15-2009 @ 3:23PM
Ilka Bent said...
I couldn't agree more with this article. I live in Atlanta and I am unemployed, I didn't go to this job fair because I know exactly what would happen. I'm also sick of people who are employed telling me that I am being negative about the job market when they know nothing about what's going on. I went to a job fair where they weren't ready for the turn out and hundreds of people were made to stand for hours without chairs or desks to fill out applications and wait to be called. These people don't really how desperate times are and they take the need for jobs lightly. In addition I wish they would stop asking stupid questions like why do you want this job? I don't know of many people that work just for the pleasure of it, we work because we need to take care of our families. We don't get dressed in the standard funeral clothes because we rejoice in it, its because employees expect to see you well dressed. We don't drive all the way across town because we like to waste gas it's because we want a JOB!!!
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2-15-2009 @ 3:24PM
chris said...
i don't bother going to job fairs, they're only good if you don't have a computer at home or if you know someone at one of the booths that can get you an interview.
go online and search through your state, county, city and private sectors for jobs [don't think that one site will have all the job openings on it] you gotta dig sometimes.
save the job sites you go to so you can check back on any new jobs [check these sites every couple days].
get your cover letter written up and make some copies of it.
get your resume' written up and go through it job by job; pick your best tasks that you did at each job.
put at least 4 friends that will give you a good referance and if you can get some co-workers and former bosses on the resume' too [ don't forget to ask permission from these people first so that they know what's going on if somebody calls them.
i'm unemployed now [since late july of last year] so i know it's hard out there; don't get down on yourself if you feel bad please go and talk to someone a friend, clergy, family, doctor or anybody that will help you get back up to your feeling better.
stay away from boozing too much and stay off illegal drugs [ a lot of jobs are doing drug testing and] you don't need to be kicked off the maybe list before you even get a chance to show them what you can do!
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2-15-2009 @ 3:25PM
Ilka Bent said...
OOps I meant realize in the above statement not really.
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2-16-2009 @ 4:21AM
charles said...
Job fairs are utilized by most large companies to seek out people who are willing to work for a lower wage to replace the higher paying workers when the unemployment rate is high.
This save companies alot of money by reducing health and vacation benefits utilized by the older workers still working at the company that the employers are prepaing to fire and replace with new workers hired at the job fair. The new workers will not recieve any benefits for 3 to 6 months saving alot of companies big dollars in health insurance and vacation pay.
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2-20-2009 @ 11:21AM
Chris said...
I am in agreement with y'all. Finding a job at a job fair is like finding a needle in a haystack. Rather than spending a day at the next job fair I took the time to create a professional portfolio at http://personavita.com. It allows me to list all the projects that I have worked on in the past which have been validated by my coworkers. So after an interview, I can give the URL and the employer can review all the projects I just told him about.
This was a better use of my time than standing in a line all day.
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