Career Fair, What good does it makes to you?

Salam w.b.t and hello all.

How are you guys been doing? Alhamdulillah… I am doing fine, alive.

In this entry, I would like to share something related to a career fair. In some of my previous entries, I shared some of my experiences of coming to career fairs. Somehow, it gave negative connotation to some of the readers.

I did mention that when I came to the fairs, some of the recruiters did treat me quite rudely, a slim chance of securing a job, and several more. It looked like I was whining, consequently giving the idea of, "coming to a career fair is worthless". This is partially correct because I enjoyed attending the fairs and I learned a lot there.

Yes, you can Google and read the experiences shared by people who came to this type of events. You can ask around what other persons get from the fairs. You can also watch on the YouTube on how the career fairs were conducted. I agree that technology advancement would save our time, energy, cost and so forth as we do not have physically to be there.

I tell you what, it will not be the same. You will hardly gain or learn anything unless you experience it yourself.

This applies in any kind of situations. Let me give you an example, a simple one. You read a review on the internet about how bad the foods served at this particular restaurant, how poor the customer service there, and other comments. One day, you decided to give it a try. After that, you found out that, "Well, it is not really that bad as it said in the review. The food tasted good and it is worth value for the money. The cashier was also very friendly".

Do you got what I mean? In a simple word, you will never know what is it like until you set your foot there. Some might feel attending a career fair is a golden chance to gain information. On the other hand, some might think it is like jumping into a huge and stink dumpster. Some may have a mixed of feeling, good and bad. At least, these peoples who ever attend the career fairs have opinions and know which sides they are on.

For the record, I attended five career fairs and two career trips during the job hunting. I do not mean to brag here, but I want to make things clear. This number is very small compared to other job seekers, to be honest. I gained several lessons by coming to the events despite all my complaints before. Thus, I want to share on what I got from the events.

Meeting the recruiters

I can meet the important persons who in charge of recruiting people. No phone call, no appointment, just pop myself up at the booth. I can ask them a lot of questions, dig information that might not be found on the internet, like the salary, opening date, position available, and number of vacancy in the company.

If you are lucky, you can get their business card and email them afterwards. I received several name cards during the fairs, and it did help me during seeking the job. I sent my inquiries directly to the recruiters in order to follow up my job applications. This helped me in getting human feedbacks quite faster rather than computer-generated email.

Communication

Soft skills could be improved greatly when you mix around with people, particularly professional people. It was intimidating for me at first, as I did not know the correct way on how to approach these people. Besides, I need to converse in English. Apart from that, it is not only about me approaching them, it is also about them evaluating and judging me. Therefore, coming to the fairs helped in enhancing my communication skills, confidence, and personalities.

Other than that, I also learned about the correct questions to be asked to the recruiters. It is like learning a secret technique to snoop a million dollar information. Hahaha…, well sort of. The thing is, they can tell whether the person is smart or not based on the questions you ask. Typical people ask questions, extraordinary people ask smart questions. The main idea is, you can learn to ask appropriate questions by coming to the fairs. This would definitely help during the job interview.

Satisfaction

I would say I gained satisfaction when coming to career fairs. Satisfaction here means that I have tried my best in every options I have during the job hunting, then I leave the rest to Allah S.W.T. You know, maybe someone rezki will be through the career fair, some may be from the face-to-face interview, and  so forth. We never know how and when Allah S.W.T is going to deliver His fortune to us, but what we can do in try in every way and tawakkal to Him. As He said in Al-Quran, "Allah will not change someone's fate not until he/she try to change their conditions".

Thus, it is our responsibility to strive our best in whatever we are doing. When you have done your best, you will feel the pleasure of satisfaction being Tawakkal to Allah S.W.T.

Basically, I want to encourage you to attend career fairs held if you got the chance. There might be something great waiting for you there, who knew, right? Alright, I think that's all I want to share in this entry. Do share your opinions and experiences about career fairs, it will be benefit others as well.

As usual, take care. Salam w.b.t.

P/S - I know, it is May already. And, I miss Perth very much.