The Do's & Don'ts of Job Fairs

Do: Come with an agenda. If you happen not to have jobs or internships to fill, assess talent for future reference. Be willing to tell that to your interviewees.

Do: Mingle with job seekers and their advisers more than other recruiters. Be seen at social events. Reach out to the shy ones or beginners.

Do: Be consistent. Students talk about interviews in the hallways. Make sure all of them hear the same message from you. Make repeat visits to campuses or job fairs.

Do: Be willing to advise when the applicants don't fit your opening or expectations. Tell them to whom they might talk more profitably; give them a strategy; tell them how this business works.

Do: Network with academics. The better a counselor understands your needs, the more likely you are to get a good referral in the future.

Do: Track those you've contacted. Hard work at a job fair may bear fruit two or three years later. A computer database can be built to easily allow you to Ątickle' your candidates' files on your own timetable.

Do: Share information with others. If you tell other recruiters what you're looking for, they may make referrals to your table.

Do: Read clips. Reinforcement from a professional is a strong inducement for improvement. Read clips in advance. When that's not possible, focus on a few.

Do: Smile. Be happy to be there. Take the fear away from the poor soldier opposite you who may never have had a job interview before.

Do: Be positive. If 20 contacts ought to yield two or three potential leads to follow, be prepared to say something encouraging to the rest. As a professional, you ought to be able to say whether there is potential in his or her presentation.

Do: Listed to the person in front of you. Rather than punching up your monologue tape, see what they have to offer and tailor your talk.

Do: Be honest. You owe it to the craft, to the person sitting across from you and yourself to tell them the truth about what they need to do to improve. This will put them a step closer to your newspaper.

Do: Recognize that everyone you interview has dozens of friends they'll talk to. Make a good impression —or a bad one —and it ripples.

Do: Follow up with people after you get home. The best recruiters do as much work after the job fair as they do during it.

Do: Prepare: Pack postings, papers, information about your paper and giveaways and have them shipped to the location of the job fair.

Don't: Disappear or appear uninterested being with the group. This reinforces a suspicion that you, your company and the industry really don't care.

Don't: Be trapped by a single bad experience. If you invest a "they" based on one uninformed or inapplicable interviewee, you're guilty of generalizing.

Don't: Allow an individual to go away empty-handed. Everyone is a loser if the only exchange is a resume and handshake.

Don't: Let your own expertise get in the way of listening to others. Recruiters, counselors and even other candidates often can identify skills, traits or experience that you may have overlooked.

Don't: Think of every encounter as competitive. "Winning" the best and brightest needn't come at the expense of killing career quests.

Don't: Let the schedule tyrannize you. If 20 contacts represent an average at a two-day job fair, it stands to reason that one or two are going to be more interesting than the majority..

Don't: Enter the job fair suspicious of what you may find. You tend to find what you look for.

Don't: Hold pass/ fail interviews. If an early determination is made that the candidate doesn't fit your needs, steer the remaining conversation toward shop talk, advice and tips.