Something on the local fishwrap’s web site cheesed me off this morning. It’s the picture that accompanies a story about a job fair for military veterans.
In the picture, some guy is talking to a recruiter while wearing a t-shirt and jeans, backwards baseball cap and with a baby strapped to his chest.
At one time I was a lot like the guy in the picture. I was late 20s, a veteran of the nation’s Elite Fighting Forces, and with a baby at home. I was also completely broke, desperate for work in a job market that was not hiring and a soon-to-be college graduate who was competing for jobs with people 6-8 years younger than me. Yet I still went to just about every job fair offered within a 200 mile radius of my school my last couple semesters wearing suits, ties and carrying nothing but a folder full of resumes.
I found job fairs to be pretty useless — except for all the free swag — because it’s such a meat market and of all the literally hundreds of resumes I left at literally hundreds of tables across the southern U.S. I got exactly one call-back regarding my resume that led to exactly zero job interviews. Wait, check that. I had in fact lined up a job interview. It’s just that the company went under before they interviewed me.
Anyway, if this is how people look for work these days it’s no wonder they’re still looking. And it’s no wonder why I’m not. Idiots.
Yep, I don’t know where people learn job interview etiquette. Certain things, like wearing appropriate clothing and not bringing your child and/or mother (I’ve seen this one before too) should be common sense. However, I’m realizing that common sense is actually NOT very common.
It’s a job fair, not the Interview. Who cares at a job fair, all it shows to me is that he’s a family man, that right there is enough to make me hire him, seriously. I would much rather (and recently did so!) hire someone with a family before some young a-hole outta school.
That might work for hippie creative-type jobs, but not the ones that companies like Boeing provides.
And I don’t care who’s offering the job. If I have to choose one of two resumes I collected from a job fair to schedule an interview I’m going to choose the one of the person who looked professional and not the one who looked like it was such a bother to show up.
Cheese is right. If you have to bring the kid (to the job fair, not an interview), bring the kid. Doesn’t mean you can’t put on a decent pair of pants and a damned tie. At the very least, you can put your damned hat on straight.
I came to the same conclusion about job fairs. What I realized was that many HR people went into HR because they were fuckoffs. Job fairs provided them a paid opportunity to fuckoff. Consequently, I decided that job fairs were for their benefit more than my own and decided that they could all fuckoff.
I received a 9 page resume on 3×5 inch yellow post it notes a few years back. (I’m not kidding.)
Job fairs are a waste of time from an employment standpoint. They are great for advertising though –gets the company name out there.