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Career fairs can be either an opportunity for you to meet candidates your company would consider hiring or just another way to collect piles of resumes. The approach you take before the fair will determine your results. The following ideas could help you make your next career fair a more productive recruiting activity.

Set your goals before the fair
Before showing up at a particular fair it is important for you to know why your company has chosen to participate in this event. Some companies participate in career fairs as part of an image advertising campaign. There may not be active job openings, but the company may want to collect resumes for future openings and maintain good public relations. More than likely, there are some critical hire positions on your staffing plan.

Based on the company priorities, you should be able to establish your goals and concentrate your efforts accordingly. So what are your goals? What types of candidates are you hoping to meet? What would make the cost of the career fair in terms of manpower and time involved a success for you? These are the types of questions you should ask yourself and others on the team as you begin your planning for the event.

Do some planning
Once you have identified your goals including the types of candidates you are hoping to meet, speak with your account representative involved with the event. Try to do this at least 30 days ahead. For example, if you are working on a computational chemist position, ask your representative if you can have access to the resume database before the event. Unfortunately, with such a specific position you cannot count on candidates with the qualifications you require to be walking by your booth. It would be worth your time to scan the database and invite qualified candidates to meet with you at the career fair. A simple e-mail letting each candidate know you would be interested in a meeting would suffice and would also be greatly appreciated by the candidate. If possible, schedule times for these candidates to meet with you.

Develop a strategy for handling the walk-ins and resumes you might receive at the event. For critical-hire positions, recruit hiring managers to attend the event with you. This will help your company be prepared to qualify candidates on the spot. Have your calendar or an electronic organizer by your side so that you can schedule meetings immediately with candidates for times at the event or at a later date at your company location.

If you do not flag these resumes and schedule a course of action with the quality candidates before they leave your booth, you risk never hearing from or finding these candidates again. Do not count on their registering on your website or proactively contacting you later. Candidates will have met many companies at this event. You can very easily lose the candidate you want to your competition by not having a firm follow-up plan with them.

Be ready to jot down some notes on resumes as you meet candidates, and have your own coding system in place so that you know what to do with each resume after the event. If your company has an applicant tracking system, make sure that the resumes do not sit for long in a pile, but that the applicant-tracking provider receives the resumes from the event and enters them appropriately with the right code.

Always have a team debriefing after the event. Make sure there is someone on your team in charge of implementing a follow-up plan with the good candidates.

Adequately staff the fair
If you are responsible for determining which company representatives will be manning the booth, recruit your team members carefully. For many job seekers, this could be their first personal interaction with your company; your company should be represented well. Company representatives and hiring managers must have a good understanding of open positions and the primary benefits the company has to offer future employees. Otherwise, your company’s participation at the event could be a waste of everyone’s time.

Take hiring managers to the event to give your company a strategic advantage. You want your company to be in a better position to schedule follow-up interviews with candidates. Job seekers will enjoy speaking with hiring managers and employees on the front lines that know the positions inside and out.

One of the biggest turnoffs for job seekers waiting in line to speak with a representative is to be told “go to the website to apply.” Some job seekers drive long distances in the hopes of learning more about your company by directly speaking with a representative. At times, representatives may be overwhelmed with questions, but be aware that abruptly referring job seekers to the website does not make the best impression on your intended audience.

Do follow-up tracking
Within two weeks after the event you should know if the career fair would be considered a success for you and your company. If you do not track your results immediately following the event, you will have a difficult time collecting that information later. To start, you and your team members need to evaluate and count how many qualified resumes were collected at the end of the event. One to two weeks later check on how many interviews occurred or were scheduled.

Since scientific positions tend to have a longer recruiting process from start to finish than positions in other areas or industries, you may not know for three to six months how many hires were made as a result of any specific event. However, you should be able to assess the quality of the candidates that attended the fair and whether it would be worthwhile to participate at this event in the future. If your company has an average cost-per-hire number or cost-per-interview number, you will be able to compare this metric with the results from any particular career fair by taking its cost and dividing it by the number of interviews that resulted. Do the same comparison with the number of hires.

Final thoughts
Career fairs can be a valuable part of your company’s recruiting strategy. In this economic downturn, more qualified scientists are attending these events. Use these events wisely for your recruitment efforts, but also view them as an opportunity outside of your office to observe what your competition is doing to attract the same candidates.

See this article on the Science Careers website.

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