Attending Diversity Career Fairs !
For an MBA student, September and October are probably the busiest months. We are surrounded by company info sessions, interviews, and of course, career fairs. Career fairs are the first step you get to know a company, and usually recruiters use career fairs as a filter to screen out unqualified candidates. Besides from the career fairs at Fisher, there are a couple of nation-wide influential diversity career fairs, such as National Black MBA Annual Conference, National Society of Hispanic MBA Annual Conference, and Asian MBA Annual Conference, just to name a few. Don't give up these great opportunities if you have a misperception about who are qualified to attend these diversity career fairs. Every MBA student, no matter race, are welcome to attend. In terms of the job locations, most of the openings are based in U.S. However, there are companies which are actively seeking candidates to work abroad. One of my American classmates asked me several weeks ago how to find a job in Asia, Singapore to be specific, because he wanted to have more international exposure. Asian MBA Conference is a good source for him.
The pace of conferences are fast and interview opportunities are given in advance or on that day because recruiting companies really want to find best candidates as soon as possible to fill out the opening positions. Many of my classmates successfully got internship/fulltime interviews during conferences and got offers afterwards. Here are some helpful tips that are given by Fisher Career Management Office:
- Review the list of companies who will be attending
- Apply for positions that interest you on conferences' websites, as many companies have jobs posted with deadlines that fall before the Recruiting Event.
- Research your target companies.
- Practice your elevator pitch, prepare for career-related conversations and refine your interview stories
In a word, definitely attend those diversity career fairs if you have enough budget!