Job Fairs

For the past few days I have pondered and pondered about what I could write for a blog. Nothing was coming to me. But then it hit me. As I was packing my book bag this morning, I started ranting about the job fair I went to last week. You can ask anyone, I tend to rant often.

Anyway, last week Armstrong had its Fall Career Fair for Liberal Arts majors. Grad schools were also in attendance for those who were interested. Before the career fair, students could pre-register and and look to see what jobs were looking for in terns of full-time, part-time, and internships. When I saw this, I had hope that jobs were actually hiring, but what a scam.

Earlier this semester, Armstrong had a part-time career fair and my fellow classmates told me it was a waste of time because no one was hiring. They said they had printed out their resumes and everything. In the back of mind, I felt like that was going to happen again, but wanted to be wrong.

So the weekend before the actual fair, I printed out ten resumes and looked up potential jobs based on this list posted on the Career Services website. I get to the job fair and a friend of mine told me no one was hiring. I wasn't in complete shock, but I was not happy. What is the point of having a career fair if you are not going to hire?

I spoke to several people and they told they had no vacancies, but to check on usajobs.com. If that was the case, there was no point in me attending the fair and I could continue my search online like I was doing. The whole point of me attending the job fair was to speak face to face about job opportunities. To put a face with a resume. At the end of the fair, Career Services had everyone fill out a survey and I was completely honest. One of the questions was if I found this job fair to be beneficial and I said no. Because it wasn't and a waste of time.

My brother back home in Atlanta, another college graduate, whom graduated from college when the economy first crashed, had the same thing happen to him. He attended a career fair and no one was hiring, they were just telling him information about their organization. I told my mom what happened and she said she didn't know why schools/organizations kept having career fairs.

I understand the we are coming out of a recession and companies have to make major cuts, but don't provide people with false hope like you are hiring and you are not. It is very discouraging when you have worked so hard and did what you were suppose to do and you cannot find something under your field of study or something close to it.

It is very frustrating when you keep hearing the same tune of how to make your resume better or writing a better cover letter, when you can tell they are just trying to buy more time. Companies can only stall for so long, people want jobs!