Are job fairs worth your time?

Thousands of job seekers, and a few dozen recruiters. Simple math will tell you a job fair is already an uphill battle.

Open houses in recent weeks in the Charlotte area have attracted hundreds, if not thousands, of desperate people. An event Tuesday sponsored by the Employment Guide brought in 1,700 people for a possible 300 jobs. Most of the attendees we talked to at the Hyatt Tuesday wanted salaries and benefits -- no surprise -- but those attendees complained afterwards that many of the companies there didn’t present those opportunities.

Career coach Mark Burch cautions many online job fairs attract sales jobs that pay by commission, multi-level marketing companies that ask you to buy in, and temp jobs. Often, colleges or companies that retrain set up shop as well. “They are looking for people who are in transition,” Burch says.

Employment Guide’s two job fairs -- held Tuesday and Thursday -- welcomed companies that fall in all of those categories: Mary Kay, Avon, Debbie’s Staffing, DeVry Institute, ECPI, and Jacob’s Ladder.

Burch also warns that some companies recruit even though they don’t have open positions. “[Job seekers] are going to job fairs with the idea of gathering leads or even getting on-the-spot job offers and that’s really not going to happen with these types of job fairs,” he said. ““This is a way for [companies] to get people to come to them to do some initial screening rather than having to do the whole online posting.”

You should know who you are speaking to at a job fair to make the most of your experience. The person behind the counter, Burch says, is often a human resources representative, but not the person in charge of hiring decisions. Burch suggests making an impression by knowing what you want. “Target the companies that you want to visit. Learn about them, learn what type of work that they do.”

Better yet, he says, skip the job fair and go after the job. “Your greater success will be doing the research on the companies you want, continuing to network…and just going online to individual companies to see what they have.”

Lyle Stone, the Charlotte-based General Manager of Employment Guide, acknowledged the limitations of events like his company sponsored in Charlotte this week. Still, he told us he’s confidant 300 job seekers will get jobs from Tuesday’s 4-hour event.

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