From: Angie Powers
Date: September 16, 2020
Subject: Last Minute Career Fair... 'Things You Need to Know", Tips and Best Practices!!

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Last Minute Best Practices for Gies Career Fair

 

Last Minute Advice for Gies Business Virtual Career Fair Week:

 

• For those registered for the fair, please read and pay attention to the emails that come from Career Eco, leading up to the fair. They are full of tips and reminders (example of one below).
• Read the ‘Welcome’ box when you enter a chat room. Employers will message those in chat if there is a long wait or something they want to communicate.
• Students can ask questions in the Main chat room as soon as they enter. You may not be greeted as you enter and please DO NOT wait for an employer to welcome you to the chat room. That is what the main chat room is for and this has been stressed to employers. So feel free to jump right in!
• Not every student will get a 1 to 1 chat, but they all have the opportunity to post questions in the main chat rooms. This is what varies from an in-person fair.
• Companies are doing their research ahead of time and will be looking at student profiles when they enter the main chat room and inviting the students they wish to speak to.
• When you enter the chat room, you will be able to see other questions that have been asked by other students as well as employers responses. Feel free once you enter, to scroll through the previous conversations to see if your question has been asked before.  You can then jump in and ask your questions and wait for someone to answer.
• You will engage in conversation in the main chat room, but students should not have the expectation that every recruiter will talk with them individually.
• Some companies will assign specific interactive roles to their crew, however the chat room may not distinguish between who’s-who (meaning who’s alumnus, recruiter or professional). In some instances, you will see the employer person’s name followed by their role or the area of the business they are a champion for.
• Career Eco works best when using Google Chrome or Firefox. If you receive an error message and are using a different browser, than please login using the recommended ones.
• You may see a “chat icon” next to a person’s name in the chat room. You can access the icon menu at the right top corner of the Chat room to know what is what.

 

Reminder: Here is the link to find all of the great company research that you and your class did:  https://uofi.box.com/s/2uere2uefmeidw1bsjcpro7v560m2nju

 

Good luck tomorrow! If you need anything, just shoot me a message. I can’t wait to hear about your experiences!

Best,

Angie

Career Eco Email that you should have received 9/15/20:

Please find important information below to help you optimize your participation in the Gies College of Business Full-Time Virtual Career Fair.

Preparation: Log in to learn more about Employers and express your interest in them prior to the event day. Apply to job postings from the Job Board section. Examples of questions to ask in the event: "What makes your company unique in the marketplace?" "What are the most important skills required in this position?" "What is the career path for this kind of role?" "What inspired you to join the company?" "What type of ongoing training is provided?" Prepare a few lines about why you think you are going to be a good candidate for the jobs that interest you. Tutorials/FAQ's: Chat sessions are open to all registrants. Review Employers' chat hours Here Chat Instructions:Tutorial (Video) or Tutorial (PDF) Tutorial (Mobile Devices) Answers to Commonly Asked Questions: FAQ’s To accept a private video chat, you must be logged in using Google Chrome or Firefox and be dressed professionally. (Video chatting is not required) If you are having difficulty accessing the chat room, try clearing your cache or choose a different browser. Chat Room Activity: Chat sessions are conducted primarily using text chatting. Each employer will manage their chat room in their own way. Some will greet you upon arrival and others will initiate a private chat with you. To start a private chat with an employer, click on the dropdown arrow next to the employer's User Name. You may also type in the main room where everyone can read your messages. Review the previous messages posted in each Chat room for answers to questions asked by others. Etiquette: Always be professional, polite, and respectful. Make each interaction positive and utilize the same professionalism you would exhibit at any Career Fair. Do not be too casual in your chat messages, use any slang, or text abbreviations. Remember, your comments are viewable by others in the room history. Be patient. If the chat session is extremely busy, you may want to move to another room or visit again later.

 

 

Also it is a read but…sharing best practices coming from last week’s Engineering Fair via Career Eco:

 

• • • Cut to the chase on your 1:1s: since employer’s can't do organic face to face convos, it makes it harder to chit chat with the recruiter. The video 1:1s will inevitably be more transactional, so get to the point and rehearse your pitch. Have your notepad/cheat sheet with bullet points up on split screen while you're talking. For Windows users, it's Windows Key + Left or Right arrow to split screen.
    • In some cases ask directly for an interview slot (if you know the employer is scheduling): This is applicable in a real career fair situation but even more important virtually. This isn't some weird dating event where you're trying to figure out the intention of the other person. State clearly what you want, and having a little bit of forwardness here, may help you.
    • Have a Plan B with Informational Interviews: if you run into technical issues, ended up not getting an interview slot or the recruiter tells you to apply online, go on LinkedIn and working on messages to Alums who work in the companies you like and schedule 20-30 min informational interviews with the goal of scoring a referral. i.e.: Remember back to your LAMP list and the 2 Hour Job Search Method! A referral vs. online applications can help you by cutting the line to the top of the stack via a referral. Most of the time an Alum will always be happy to refer, but you first have to build the relationship with them. Asking educated questions helps when you're networking -- people love talking about themselves and what they do

 

• Hiring pipeline for some fields will be different this year and generally not for the better: Campus hiring plans for many companies will be impacted this year, but it won't be a complete halt because it's important to replenish some of the talent pipeline at entry-level. But because the supply of roles is going down this year, Econ 101 tells us it'll be more competitive to land a gig than previous years. Industries that are impacted this year you can probably guess -- my list below is just to confirm any thoughts that you may already have around this:
  • Industries impacted by Pandemic: the obvious suspects are hospitality and tourism and anything restaurant-related. Oil and Gas, agribusiness (not only COVID related, but also macrotrend impacts as well), automotive, retail, real estate.
  • Some impact: software tech (DEPENDS on what their products are so do your research, some tech areas are still doing great like cybersecurity vs Airbnb, Lyft, Uber), consulting in general except for some M&A areas and turnaround/restructuring which are doing ok(consulting impact will be focus/field dependent which is reflective of market conditions), boutique consulting firms will have a tougher time than the larger ones.
  • Minimal Impact: consumer packaged goods, financial services, accounting/audit, chipmakers (Intel, Nvidia, AMD, etc.)
  • No Impact: Bio-pharma (in fact, some segments of pharma has hiring surges), healthcare providers, healthcare payers (insurance companies), medical devices
• How do you win in this environment: due to the competitive environment this year the only way to win is to be more focused than your peers and be better prepared. Some generic tips below:
  • Job hunting is a numbers game: Say you have a 10% positive response rate based on the number of apps you submit. Are you going to score more interviews with 10 applications or 100? Simple math here.
  • Treat every interview as your last one: I know some folks have the mentality of treating interviews with less desirable firms as a practice session which you can afford during non-COVID years. Due to the hiring pipeline constraints this year, I'd highly recommend to 100% prepare for every interview like your life depends on it. Know your STAR stories, your answers, nail your whiteboard/coding interviews, re-read your case interviews 100x, practice with your parents/friends/friends on interviews every day so you're an expert at talking about your accomplishments
  • Outside of extracurriculars, build some hard skills/knowledge: To set you apart this year, it'll definitely help if you can get some certifications outside of school (even Coursera is fine) on topics that are relevant to your field, or the field you're interested in. There are many free certification tracks you can get through Coursera or free MOOCs, or very low-cost programs with student discounts. We'd much rather chat with you about the stuff you've learned.