Today I went to a the Lesbians who tech career fair meetup, don’t let the name fool you it’s not exclusive to lesbians. It is the same as any other meetup except there is a the added theme of tolerance and fairness. So now onto what I learned.
Dress Code: I have been to many career fairs, general and a few specialized ones such as the actuarial career hosted by ASNY. The dress code for these have always been professional or at the very least business casual. So today I was very surprised to see jeans, hoodies, and short shorts. This is only my first tech meetup so I’m not sure if this is unique to the event or if the tech world is just more lenient on dress code. I love the way I look in a suit and enjoy matching my hoodies with sneakers so I like both dress codes.
Resumes: I have always been taught to bring extra copies of my resume whenever I attend a career fair so today I brought twenty. I currently have sixteen remaining, only four of the recruiters I spoke with offered to take my resume. I was surprised to learn that most tables were not taking physical copies of resumes. Instead they would take down your contact information and reach out to you through email at which point you will reply back with your resume. Having a resume on hand isn’t a bad thing, it’s just not as necessary.
Turnout: Whenever I go to these events I always expect it to be very crowded with long wait times to speak with interviewers. However with this event that was not the case. The crowd was the perfect size for the venue and my longest wait time was about ten minutes, and that was to speak with a Google recruiter. A side effect of this was that I never felt rushed during any of my conversation with recruiters today.
I’d also like to add that this was my first tech career fair so this is not an indication of all career fairs so take this with a grain of salt. In the end I thought the career fair was great and I enjoyed learning about all the cool tech that’s being built.