ASU Downtown Job Fair

Last week a colleague and I attended the ASU Spring Job Fair at the Downtown Campus in hopes of a) expanding our exposure of available jobs and b) getting some much needed practice networking and putting our experience to the test with acting professionals.

This was my first time attending a job fair so not knowing what to expect I suited up, updated my CV, and briefly browsed the list of attendees. As someone interested in working for federal or regional government’s interested in international missions, the list of agencies involved in this work is already bleak and as expected was quite frankly nonexistent with the exception of the CIA and FBI. Regardless, I chose to attend and gain some experience.   

The event itself felt much like a round of awkward speed dating and as far as I could tell the representatives from the organizations felt it as much as the participants. At this point however, I was determined to at least get rid of the CV’s I’d spent time revisiting and printing off. 

I visited the FBI, DEA, Social Security Administration and for the most part the sessions went fairly positive. The recruiters let me know of their agencies breadth and validated much of my experience which lead to an unexpected boost of ego and reaffirmation that my hard work these past five years will pay off. We exchanged business cards and I look forward to following up in the future. 

One organization however, where the experience wasn’t as positive was with the CIA. For a recruiter, the agent offered very little information about opportunities at the agency and seemed disinterested with answering our questions in general. This was discouraging, seeing that his was one of the organizations I was most interested in learning about. Regardless, I’ll take the only advice he offered and take my chances applying for a position ONLINE.

All in all, experiencing a career fair for the first time was an interesting experience that proved unexpectedly painless. This experience has definitely opened my awareness of the value of job fairs and encouraged me to participate in future opportunities.