A campus career fair is an on-campus career event. Traditionally, employers from specific industries, or who target specific campus demographics, congregate in a large hall. Similar to a trade show, employers set up booths which are then browsed by the students who attend the fair.
Often, employers will offer gifts or other promotional items in order to entice students to visit their booth. Examples of promotional items range from ‘Chance to win an iPod’ to small toys to free pizza.
Recruiting uses
Employers generally view Campus Career Fairs as an effective on-campus branding tool. For some employers, it is also an opportunity to meet students face-to-face, or to collect resumes on the spot.
Cons
Campus Career Fairs can be an expensive recruitment method. When taking into consideration the cost of the booth, promotional materials, the time of the company recruiter/representative, and travel expenses, costs per fair reach into the thousands. Further, career fairs occur at set times and dates, meaning that not all students have access to the campus career fair due to scheduling or other conflicts. Finally, due to the high cost of fairs, and investments in electronic applicant tracking systems, most employers do not collect resumes at campus career fairs, making it hard for employers to track return on investment (ROI).
How to get started
Employers interested in participating in on-campus career fairs can contact the career centre of the schools they are interested in directly. There are often at least two career fairs per year, per faculty at each of Canada’s 200+ university and college campuses.
Have an opinion or point to share on campus career fairs? Share it here and – Wikipedia-style – we’ll add it to our article!
4 Comments
Pingback by TalentEgg’s Employer Hatch » Blog Archive » Timing and communication are essential for good campus recruitment — June 3, 2009 @ 10:39 am
[...] try to combat this problem by going to career fairs and working with the various career centers at the universities, but in reality only a small [...]
Comment by Jeremy O'Krafka — June 8, 2009 @ 11:11 pm
Figuring out which campus career fairs you want to attend can be one of the biggest challenges. Most of the information is located on each school’s career centre website.
One easy way to access all of the career fair information for schools across Canada is to become a CACEE member @ http://www.cacee.com. Members have access to a central calendar with links and descriptions for most of the university and college career fairs.
Pingback by The Hidden Cost of Campus Career Fairs | TalentEgg's Employer Hatch — June 9, 2009 @ 1:56 pm
[...] inexpensive. For example, a recent conversation with an employer revealed the perceived cost of a campus career fair is “only $400…the cost to set up our booth.” But the cost is so much more. There’s the [...]
Pingback by Three ways to attract Gen Y employees at a career fair | TalentEgg's Employer Hatch — June 23, 2009 @ 10:43 am
[...] us have received promotional materials during university/college fairs, frosh weeks, festivals and career fairs. These items, called SWAG (Stuff We All Get), are a way to make your company more memorable after [...]
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