Re: Career Fair etiquette/behavior

[Robert_Johnson -at- percussion -dot- com]

Carolee Burgess asked:

"I'm going to a career fair in Boston on Tues. to try and make some headway
as the seeker of an entry-level TW position in this market. There are
several interesting tech companies, but I'm not sure if they are seeking
writers.

My question is this: Does anyone know if there is a particular way to
approach companies at a job fair? Do you treat it like a mini-interview 
and
wait for questions, or do you have a quick summary of yourself that you
deliver with your resume? Should I even ask if they're looking for 
writers?
This is my first fair (probably of many) and I don't want to violate any
rules I am not aware of."

In all honesty, I wouldn't even waste my time with career fairs as a 
career changer.

I was changing careers on the upswing of the tech boom.  Even then, as a 
career changer, trying to find an entry level position through a career 
fair was an almost complete waste of time.  In the Boston area, I found 
the larger career fairs especially useless.  (In fact, I don't even 
remember the name of the companies that ran them any more.)

Career fairs are essentially useless because the people staffing the 
booths are usually HR types, and sometimes sales and marketing people, but 
overall, people who have no real ability to screen tech writers.  They'll 
look at your resume and see if you know specific tools they have requests 
for (assuming they even have openings, which is far from a given these 
days), and then tell you that they probably don't have a plcae for you 
because you don't have x number of years of experience with 
FrameMaker+SGML on some exotic version of Unix.  You probably won't see a 
documentation manager or documentation team lead who has any real interest 
in hiring you.

Networking is a far more effective approach, and there's a great 
networking group in Boston called WIND (www.windnetworking.org).  I'd also 
look to do some basic tech writing on a volunteer basis, either for a 
non-profit or for an open source project such as the Linux Documentation 
Project.  At least in those cases you'll have something substantive to 
present to a hiring manager.

If you insist on going to career fairs, focus on the ones that are smaller 
and technically oriented.  You have a better chance of producing a useful 
contact because you may (emphasis:  MAY) actually meet a hiring manager. 
But I wouldn't count on it these days.

Bob Johnson
Documentation Specialist
Percussion Software
Stoneham, MA



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