This past Tues­day the real­iza­tion of months of plan­ning bared fruit at the NEPA job fair where approx­i­mately 3,000 job seek­ers came to look for jobs and attend a day long Job Seeker Strat­egy sem­i­nar. This was the 20th year for this event, my 9th year attend­ing and my 1st year on the plan­ning end of it.

Tra­di­tion­ally, the job fair has been of the stan­dard vari­ety with employer booths and news­pa­per adver­tis­ing. My con­tri­bu­tions to the event in my first year as a plan­ning part­ner were the upgraded web­site & blog, social media and seminar.

There was noth­ing wrong with the job fair as it had always been for the past 19 years except that in my opin­ion it lacked moder­nity of the times, the use of tech­nol­ogy and an edu­ca­tional com­po­nent. Actu­ally, it wasn’t just my opin­ion. As a ven­dor in past years I often heard the word on the street that every year it was

The same old thing

I vowed not to allow that hap­pen another year since now I was empow­ered to have influ­ence and make change. Here are some reflec­tions on what went down and what I learned.

Con­trary to what you might think, the most pop­u­lar sem­i­nar ses­sion was not using social media for job search (it was 3rd place). The most attended was how to get gov­ern­ment employ­ment. It requires no net­work­ing at all… The attrac­tion is all too under­stand­able why all the seats were taken and the over­flow of peo­ple stood in the back of the sem­i­nar area.

The sec­ond most pop­u­lar ses­sion was how to do well in an inter­view. There were a lot of ques­tions on what to say, how to say it, how to cope with nerves, how to know if it went well.. Atten­dees appre­ci­ated hear­ing the “real deal” because the process is con­fus­ing to a can­di­date who doesn’t under­stand it. We could do a much bet­ter job on our web­sites and in our can­di­date selec­tion process of let­ting job seek­ers know expec­ta­tions, time lines, process..

Social media for job seek­ers was inter­est­ing, a lot of ques­tions on Myspace (I attribute this to a cos­mic vor­tex) and what to do once one cre­ates an account. In other words, what does one do to “social net­work”? This is mak­ing me think a lot. There were a lot curi­ous peo­ple there that either haven’t cre­ated accounts because they don’t know what to do, or started accounts and didn’t do any­thing with them — because they didn’t know what to do…  It seemed the crowd was com­fort­able vis­it­ing web­sites and job boards but they didn’t “get” the net­work­ing angle. So, we cov­ered the basic prin­ci­ples, and because an hour is not nearly enough time to really delve into tech­nique — I promised to hold workshops.

These are peo­ple who have been out of work a really long time — some go to the library for inter­net because it isn’t within their monthly bud­get. Per­haps a spon­sor will offer to help. If not, I’ll do a series for free because I can’t fathom charg­ing the unem­ployed for this.

The résumé tips ses­sion was fraught with ques­tions on what and what not to include, what style to use, how many pages it should be, if ref­er­ences are required, the nor­mal stuff… What was clearly obvi­ous to me was that the aver­age job seeker doesn’t under­stand the doc­u­ment is a mar­ket­ing piece for Me Inc. I referred them to the free résumé writ­ing classes offered at the local branch of the State one stop shop. It’s not the gourmet ser­vice offered by some of my cer­ti­fied résumé writ­ing friends.. but none of these indi­vid­u­als was in the sit­u­a­tion to be able to afford paid services.

What do you peo­ple want from me??? That was the ques­tion answered in the ses­sion on employer expec­ta­tions. You would think this is work 101 stuff — but not.. Some peo­ple think they should be able to bring excuses to work and not be charged PTO, oth­ers don’t agree sick depen­dents should affect their atten­dance or be cause for sep­a­ra­tion when it does. How to “move up in the com­pany” is inter­est­ing to many and “I shouldn’t have to so some­one else’s job” is com­mon. We need to do a bet­ter job with employer brand­ing and mar­ket­ing to edu­cate prospec­tive employ­ees on what our expec­ta­tions really are so that they are empow­ered to be deci­sion mak­ers in the process too on whether employ­ment with XYZ would be a good “fit”.

How to work with a recruiter had an exec­u­tive gath­er­ing of note tak­ers. So many peo­ple think the title recruiter has one def­i­n­i­tion and clear­ing up that mis­nomer is impor­tant. When and how to fol­low up, what to do with the feed­back, every­one was curi­ous and con­fused about these things. I’m think­ing we don’t put out enough infor­ma­tion on what a recruiter does… like it’s some secret order or some­thing. OK, maybe it is =)

Imag­ine if every­one under­stood the impor­tance of psy­chol­ogy in the job search and work­place. The ses­sion on emo­tional intel­li­gence was incred­i­bly inter­est­ing, if not too short and poorly attended. The pre­sen­ter under­stood why. Peo­ple in gen­eral aren’t really in touch with their emo­tions, don’t under­stand how they sab­o­tage qual­ity of life, and many push them away and are hor­ri­ble at man­ag­ing them. When it came time for inter­ac­tive exer­cises it was men in the ses­sion that vol­un­teered. There were some women sit­ting there with their eyes glazed over. <— Look, this is just my obser­va­tion. I’m try­ing not to be judgmental.

I thought adding a Job Seeker Strat­egy sem­i­nar to the job fair was a good idea. Now I think this sem­i­nar needs to go on a road tour to high schools and col­leges, one stop shops and job fairs in every com­mu­nity and town across the country.

If you work in HR or recruit­ing, please imple­ment it in your com­mu­nity. Or if you would like to spon­sor my road­show, let me know. I could really dig a national tour…