Scatterbrain

Career Fairs

09/13/25

// Disclaimer - I will be attending career fairs this year on behalf of Applied Intuition. All views expressed in this post are my own.

Career fairs have netted me two of the five technical jobs I've worked (including my current position) since I was a freshman at Georgia Tech. They're surprisingly controversial events which many students will swear are a complete waste of time. I'll start this post with rebuttals to the more common reasons students give for not attending. I'll end with some simple tips on how to prep for and navigate career fairs.

Rebuttals

#1. "All companies ever do is tell you to apply online." Do you expect them to hand you a written application to fill out then and there, with a special quill pen to sign your name? Of course you'll have to apply online. Just because you ordered through the app instead of at the counter doesn't mean your CFA¹ sandwich™®© tastes any different when it arrives.

#2. "They aren't there to actually hire the students they talk to, just to build brand on campus and increase overall applicants." Pretend you're a recruiter at <average tech company> for a moment: you've flown back to SF after a long, difficult day at <your university here> of telling students to apply online. Your boss pulls you aside and asks how it went, so you proudly inform, "great! we now have 1,000 more resumes to review!" They blink their eyes once before responding, "we're <average tech company>, we somehow had 40k students apply for our internships three days before the postings were officially listed. the whole reason we sent you is so we can filter our already too large pool and target top students from the school." Your body is found in a dumpster a few days later, a Greenhouse backlog of 41k applicants still open on your phone.

#3. "I'll just fill out the attendance link after one of my friends sends it to me." Brilliant idea, if it wasn't old enough to have been coined by your grandmother. You're banking on three crutches for this to work. 1: Other students aren't also doing this en masse (lol). If they are, then 2: your resume must be better than the other students'. 3: The company has enough interview slots left over after giving their first few to the people they actually talked to and liked. I'm not saying this doesn't work occasionally, but it should be a last resort because of time constraints, not your go-to strategy.

#4. "My resume isn't good enough to get me noticed." Shouldn't this be your main reason for attending? If you're being honest here, then it certainly won't do better as a vacuum application online, right? No one crawls out of the womb with a stacked resume (despite what some of y'all believe), so you have to start somewhere. At minimum, you'll at least get a feel for how career fairs work for future years when you have better odds of capitalizing.

#5. "I don't have time to attend." This is so dramatic - it's one day of your life. Really just one afternoon or morning. Why are you attending university in the first place? Internships are the surest path towards employment after school, and if you're instead recruiting for new grad positions then... I mean I guess you could choose not to go to the building where people are trying to give other students like you jobs? Because you have a better opportunity the same day which you can't reschedule?

Tips - prep

#1. Dress sharp, smell good (cliche to mention at this point for CS majors), optimize your first impression. My physics teacher in high school had a great line about this:

You could watch someone give the best speech you've ever heard and only remember the bit of food they had stuck in their teeth the whole time.

#2. Update your resume and optimize it for human readability. There are plenty of solid templates floating around, and a good litmus test is to hand it to a friend who hasn't seen it, then take it back after 7 seconds² and ask them to repeat what they remember from it. Rinse and repeat with edits until the big points get across.

#3. Bring a stack of printed copies of your resume. Not every company will accept them, but do your best to hand them off - they help the representatives remember you afterwards when they decide to whom to extend interviews.

#4. Be realistic about what companies you can land. You probably aren't snagging Citadel as a freshman, so don't waste your time in a two hour line. Make a list of companies you want to target, then order them by some combination of weighting which ones you like the most, which ones have the shortest lines, and (once you're at the fair) which ones have booths closest to your current position. Your goal should be to hit as many as possible.

#5. Have a polished elevator pitch. My pattern is a brief intro (who am I, what I've done), mentioning why I'm interested in the work (only if you have a genuine reason), and then immediately getting the other person talking about themselves. Then actively listen for little things they mention which you can relate to, and chime in only if you have something good to add.

When I left the dining room after sitting next to Gladstone, I thought he was the cleverest man in England. But when I sat next to Disraeli, I left feeling that I was the cleverest woman.³

Tips - day of

#1. For your top choices, be one of the first AND one of the last students they talk to. Swing back around at the end of the day when they're wrapping up and briefly say hi + re-iterate your interest. They'll be more likely to remember you and will normally take your enthusiasm positively. Don't be annoying and stick around too long though - they'll also be tired and wanting to leave.

#2. If you can't find them afterwards, see if their company has any other events on campus the same week. The events will likely be hosted by the same folks at the career fair. Again, two points of contact with the representatives goes a long way.

#3. Write down the names of the people you talk to. You can message them later via LinkedIn, personal website, or guessing their email. Don't ask for contact information at the fair - it's more polite to reach out afterwards as a follow-up. At smaller companies, the representative can probably directly refer you to a specific team if they like you. Otherwise, they can at least provide advice on how to prep for their interviews (if there is anything atypical about their process).

#4. Research the companies ahead of the career fair and have a talk track prepped for each. My go-to resources are their website's most recent technical blog posts or general news articles about the company. You can also search for this info while waiting in line with your phone, which has the added benefit of helping pass the time. A real career demon would find a way to learn who the representatives were ahead of time and tailor questions to their teams and work specifically.

#5. Be adaptable. If your #1 company turns out to be 400 other students' #1 company, reevaluate if the wait is worth it or if you should swing by later. At the same time, stick to your general game plan. Towards the end of the day, everyone starts getting tired, and sitting in line for John Deere begins to seem less appealing than snagging the last of the Google propeller hats. The merch is a lie 🍰. Stay strong.

Happy hunting friends!