Many of us went to the National Black MBA Career Fair at New Orleans a week ago, and a team of Class of 2010 candidates competed in a case competition during the conference, which was a big success.
To me, the career fair was quite impressive, as it was my first time attending any career fair in any part of the world. However, some people who had attended last year’s NBMBA career fair thought that there were less companies coming to this year’s career fair, which was not a good sign for the economy. However, I found the company representatives at the Career Fair were very helpful, especially when they were not from HR, but rather from the teams which were actually looking for talents. The information from HR representatives was usually too general and they couldn’t understand the position you were interested in as much as the people from a similar position would be able to understand. Thus, I somehow felt if a company sent only HR people, they were less eager for recruiting.
Working at a Career Fair is always helpful, especially as a real case training of the 2 minute pitch. To effectively, position yourself within the first 30 second of your conversation with the representative is quite challenging.
- Jiafei Huang
Smeal MBA Class of 2010