With the April 11th Spring Career Fair only a week away, many of you may be feeling a little ‘career fair anxiety’ about how to make the best impression on your favorite companies. No need to fear as the people from Vault Career Insider have some tips to give you that edge and make you stand out from the crowd! They offer some very important Do’s and Don’t's by talking about the good, the bad and the ugly things that students do at career fairs.

Before you go, make sure to:

• Find out which companies will be there
• Research your favorite companies to have some talking points to bring up
• Shower (this might seem obvious, but there are still plenty of students who don’t)

While you’re there:

• Show up in a clean and pressed suit to make a good impression
• Even for companies that prefer electronic resumes and applications, bring paper resumes as well
• DON’T chew gum while speaking with employers

After you leave:

• Use LinkedIn to make a connection with the person you spoke with at the fair or follow up with thank you notes, either hand-written or through email (or both)
• DON’T stalk the company. Phone calls very day after the fair is not going to move your application along any faster.

Overall, remember to relax and be confident in yourself and your abilities. You would not have been able to get to this point if you were not capable of great things. These employers are not looking for the best candidate as much as the best person for the job, so remember to add a little of your own personality to your conversations as well.

To read the entire article, simply log on to the Vault Career Insider database through Hagerty Library’s website and click the “Blogs” tab on the top of the page. While you’re there, check out all the other great tools Vault has to offer like Career Guides, Industry Information and Resume Advice. You can also follow this link to the article: http://blogs.vault.com/blog/job-search/how-to-find-job-fair-success/.

Happy Hunting!

We have all heard about them: Monster.com, CareerBuilder.com, LinkedIn, etc. We know that they can be helpful in getting your resume out there for companies to see. But we also know that we are competing against hundreds, sometimes thousands, of other job seekers just like us. How can we possibly stand out from the crowd with those odds stacked against us?

Rob Byron, from the staffing organization Winter, Wyman, wrote an article on how to separate yourself from the faceless masses on the Internet. In the article, Byron discusses how to build your brand with everything you do online. From your Facebook posts, to your Tweets, to a blog you write or frequently comment on, think about how a prospective employer would view your online actions. Byron also provides recommendations on how to properly use job boards and social media to show your best face to the employment world.

To read he whole article, visit http://mashable.com/2012/01/08/recruiters-perspective-job-boards-career-websites/.

One of the most useful techniques for getting a job in a company is by directly contacting them and inquiring about any employment opportunities they may have. This shows that you are a go-getter, someone who is willing to take that extra step to get the job done. Many prospective employers see this as a good thing.

However, one can also be too overzealous in reaching out to companies, which can eliminate your chances at getting a job at that company and potentially damage your reputation elsewhere. How do you know when to draw the line between actively pursuing an opportunity and being an annoying, arrogant self-seeker?

Writers from the database Vault Career Insider recently looked into the dilemma. They wrote an article which highlighted an example of exactly how not to contact a company. The article also discusses what the job seeker should have done to improve his chances at getting his message across. At the end, the author provides some good pointers on the best way to reach out to those companies that you are very interested in. Some of those points included:

• Be humble: Even though you may think that you’re the perfect fit for the position, it doesn’t mean that you should assume that you will be working at that company.
• Be polite: Don’t passive-aggressively ask what is taking so long in the job search process. The more you come off as rude or pushy, the less likely you will be offered a position.
• Be professional: Just as you should dress professionally, you should also contact companies professionally. Keep your emails short and direct without spelling or grammar errors. If you are speaking to someone directly, speak clearly and avoid slang and filler words like “ain’t,” “shoulda,” “like,” or “um.”

For the entire article, click here or create an account in Vault and read through Vault’s blogs.

Are you in need of some summer housing options?  Need a place to stay while you complete A and B round interviews?  Make sure to look into Drexel’s Summer Intern Housing Program, which can provide you with short-term accommodations over the summer.

For all you Film & Video majors out there: this post from nofilmschool.com offers tips and YouTube video examples on how to create a better demo reel.

Sure, a 21st century job search has changed in character from its previous iteration.  No longer do job seekers  scour the newspaper for job ads; instead, they crawl the web.  But there are new job search strategies to add any job seeker’s repertoire: using social media!  Facebook and Twitter may be central to your social life, but they can be use be extremely useful to your job search.  Mashable explains how in this handy article.

Are you finding  yourself in a position where you have found the perfect company in the perfect industry that you’d like to intern for, only to find out they don’t have in internship or co-op program?  Have you created a list of potential employers using one of our company databases but are unsure of how to begin the conversation with them on becoming a co-op?  Read these helpful tips on how to create your own internship from the Washington Post’s Campus Overload blog.

This short read from the New York Times was published last week and gives some good tips on writing a resume that catches the eye of an employer:

Writing a Resume That Shouts ‘Hire Me’

Sure, we’re all used to hearing about what questions to expect on an interview.  We even have books like More Best Answers to the 201 Most Frequently Asked Interview Questions and The 250 Job Interview Questions You’ll Most Likely Be Asked and the Questions That Will Get You Hired! that address commonly asked questions in an interview setting.  But what about those totally off-the-wall questions that no reasonable person could ever expect, such as “If you were a brick in the wall, which brick would you be and why?”  I mean, how would YOU answer that question?  (Believe it or not, ladies and gentlemen, that is a REAL interview question asked by Nestle USA!).  Well, thankfully, the good folks at Glassdoor.com have compiled a list of the Top 25 Oddball Interview Questions of 2009.  Check it out!

I guess this would be a good time to introduce Glassdoor!  We recently established a partnership with Glassdoor that allows our library users to access company salaries, reviews, and interviews for over 70,000 employers, posted anonymously by employees.  If you find that you can’t access information on the website, please let me know at dl423@drexel.edu.  We have a username and password for the Drexel community that should give you access to everything.

I stumbled across this article today on Philly.com on how to write a cover letter.  Sometimes job seekers forget how important a cover letter is!!  I think it gives some really great insight, such as:

“Just like planning for an academic paper, you need to do adequate research before you start.”

“Expect to revise, and you won’t be frozen by the feeling that you have to get it exactly right the first time.”

“Opening lines are key.”

Check out the article for more great tips!!