In the last post, we shared the first half of our interview with a close friend that happens to be a hiring manager and long time career fair representative. She has attended innumerable career fairs throughout her professional life in association with companies, large and small. Her candid comments on what she typically looks for, avoids and asks have provided valuable insight thus far, so now we continue, intent on extracting every piece of useful advice she has to offer. Some of you might find the last question particularly relevant…

Question: Do you ever feel like unqualified candidates are wasting your time?

Answer: I don’t think a candidate should ever choose not to talk to me about a position simply because he or she doesn’t feel qualified. Often, it’s the experiences that the candidate has that he or she considers irrelevant, which my company and I are looking for. It’s always worth a conversation to see if any of those experiences come up.

Question: What do you look at first on the resume of a college student?

Answer: Major comes first. It’s obviously the best indicator of whether your interests and qualifications are in the ballpark of what I’ m looking for. Next, my eyes go to relevant courses for the same reason. The third thing I look at is work experience because even if you don’t have anything there relevant to the field, I still want to make sure that you’re motivated and have some experience dealing with people in the working world. Finally, I’ll make my way to your GPA, because you need to be able to talk about why it looks the way it does.

Question: What is the most common flaw you see in resumes?

Answer: So many of them are too wordy. As someone new to the professional world, I don’t expect you to have more than a page’s worth of experience, and if you do, I assume you’ve gone into excessive detail. Especially in a career fair setting, I need to be able to look at your resume and find points of interest to discuss with you after a quick glance.

Question: Is there anything someone can do to get their resume to be handed off to someone useful?

Answer: Yes, it’s usually as simple as asking. At the end of a discussion with a career fair representative, don’t hesitate to directly inquire about whether or not that person is in a position to hire someone with your background, and if not, if they would be kind enough to try and get it to someone who is. The point is there’s no magic trick to getting your resume where you want it to go, other than simply requesting that it be sent there.

Question: What questions are you likely to ask a candidate?

Answer: Step one is finding out what exactly you’re looking for. I’ll often have multiple positions available, so you should know what you want to do and be able to decide confidently which of the positions I’m offering is for you. And by the way, answering that you’d be willing to fill any of the openings is a poor answer; all that tells me is you haven’t even thought about what you want to do, let alone if my company can offer such a position.

Question: Do you notice body language? If so, what’s good and what’s bad?

Answer: Eye contact, good. Looking at shoes, bad. Other than that, just practice confident body language. This means minimize the excessive shifting and fidgeting that I see so often, and try not to speak at the speed of light. And while we’re talking about speaking, let me add that chewing gum is a bad idea.

Question: What’s the best thing a candidate with a low GPA can do to get their foot in the door?

Answer: As I mentioned before, always have an explanation ready. A low GPA doesn’t have to mean general incompetence, but that’s going to be my logical explanation if you can’t give me a viable alternative. Beyond that, be prepared to emphasize the areas in which you have performed well, such as work experience or relevant projects. For example, maybe you did badly in a class because of your performance on a certain exam, but you also happened to have achieved high marks on a project from that same class, which quite frankly, is more relevant than a test grade. If this is the case, you also must realize that references play a more important role, since I no longer have a standardized measurement to back you up.

…And so the interview ended. Our friend the hiring manager was off to get ready for the thick of career fair season, as are we. However, pending some feedback from readers on how useful this post was, she could very well be back again soon to talk to us about interviewing.

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