Graduate Fairs

So in an effort to find a new job, or at least, make it appear to my parents that I am looking for a job. I went to the Guardian Graduate Fair. 

With a group of job hungry friends we were prepared, ready and dressed to impress*. Included in these preparations was making sure we'd all signed up beforehand online to ensure early entry. However upon arrival there was a realisation that not only were we prepared, ready and dressed to impress but that so were a thousand other students. The queue to the conference hall was so long that it snaked around the building and down onto the high street. 

It was then that it suddenly dawned on me that all these other people were looking for jobs too.

Once we had gotten into the fair we went to a talk entitled  'Media Moves: broadcast, digital print and social media.' the questions that were asked only ceased to make me feel inadequate as the students that were there had written blogs with huge followings, had written articles. To me, it appeared that they were already so much more far ahead in their career paths than I am. 

Wandering around the booths was fun but my advice is that you need to have some kind of goal and idea of what you want jobwise. Sure its fine getting as many free pens, badges and chocolate coins as you want but ultimately to go to a graduate fair you need a goal and you need to be focused. Both of those things I did not have, the chocolate coins were nice though! 


*to dress for a graduate fair can be difficult. I ended up going overboard, mainly because the smart clothes that I own are super smart and I didn't want to look like I was attending a funeral. My friend said something quite wise about dressing for a graduate fair which was to save your best outfit for the interview. So graduate fair = smart casual.