By Tanya Taylor, CHRP, CRS

From nervousness to excitement, frustration to anticipation, and desperation to hope!

If you've ever attended a job fair, you will likely relate to the feelings of anxiety job seekers experience at these career events.  If you are actively job hunting, you will also discover that job fairs are an excellent and fast way to build your career network.  You will meet myriads of recruiters and employers who offer a wide range of employment opportunities.  So, instead of stocking up on antacids to ease stomach tension, review the following keys to successfully surviving a job fair:

TOP 10 JOB FAIR TIPS:

1. Update or Revamp Your Resume. Utilize the services of a certified professional resume writer.  This career investment is worthwhile and crucial in order for you to obtain professional, customized marketing documents that will ensure you stand out as the best from the rest.  With a professionally written resume, you are far more likely to quickly win interviews that can lead to job offers.  Most certified resume writers can easily be found on career association websites and in the Yellow Pages.
2. Review and Prioritize the List of Exhibitors.  Make a list of who you will target at the job fair.  Research the company websites in advance.  Check out their career page, mission statements, and company overview to determine which exhibitors may be a good match for your career endeavours.  This will allow you to visit those exhibits first and will help you to determine how many copies of your resume you will need to bring with you.  It is still important to visit the other exhibits but for these booths you can leave your personal career networking card instead of a resume.
3. Prepare, Practice, and Memorize Your Personal Infomercial.  Create a 15-30 second description that you can use to introduce and sell your qualifications to every potential employer you meet.
4. Bring a Job Fair Kit. At a minimum, your job fair kit should contain:

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Employers Get Personal - What Should You Do?
By Peter Weddle
 
Please note: Some of the references in this article are USA specific program(s) and dates for which there may be similar in Canada (SmartHire)

Personal used to mean private, but not any more, especially in a job search. Employers are increasingly factoring individual background information into their assessment of job candidates. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, half of all employers were doing so less than a decade ago. Today an astonishing 96% of all companies-small as well as large-are conducting background checks on job candidates. It is now the norm in the hiring process.
What's behind this surge in investigative activity? Several factors are playing a role:

• First, with much publicized incidents of workplace violence and the ominous threat of terrorism, employers are increasingly concerned about the security of their workers. As a consequence, they want to be sure that the workers they hire are who they say they are.
• Second, the legal and financial costs of negligent hiring decisions can cripple and even ruin otherwise healthy companies. In our litigious society, hiring someone who then harms other employees or customers is often a quick ticket to the courthouse.
• Third, the cost of performing background checks has dropped dramatically due to an increasingly crowded field of vendors who are staffed and equipped to do them efficiently. As costs go down, even small employers are able to afford them.
• And finally, technology has made it far easier for employers to acquire personal data and will likely make it even easier still in the future. For example, the U.S. Social Security Administration is testing an Internet program that will enable employers to verify candidate names and social security numbers in a single day.

These factors ensure that personal is now public or, at least, available to any employer who asks. Whether you're looking for a job today, plan to do so tomorrow, or think you might at some point in the future, this trend will affect you. The question you have to ask, therefore, is: How should you react to this new reality?

First, take a deep breath. These background checks do not represent the arrival of Big Brother or Big Sister. They may feel a bit intrusive at first, but in the

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