By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter

It seems like every week, an ad appears for a job fair offering hope to unemployed people that they will get a job. Sometimes, TV news camera crews show the lines outside of people who want a job and hope it lies within the walls of that ballroom or convention center.

Yet the truth is that no one will be hired that day. You will be asked to hand your resume to someone who will put it in a pile with several hundred or several thousand others. You will try to get a few seconds with a recruiter who will try to get away because 20 other people are trying to get a few seconds of their time too . . . and that isn’t the worst part. That can happen months later.

A few months later, a third-party recruiter hears about a new job at a firm that attended the fair so they email your resume or try to immediately engage their client to talk about you and persuade them to interview you..

The firm looks your name up in their handy dandy applicant tracking system, sees it, and says, “We know that person,” but because they are too busy, never call you.

The employer knew about the job and did not search their applicant tracking system for leads. They did not call you or blast out an email. The third-party recruiter heard about the job, tried to submit you, was declined the referral and the employer still did not call you because of being too busy and unmotivated (most corporate recruiters do not receive any bonus per hire so they are not going to go the extra mile to call you at night).

You are left in limbo without an interview all because cost-conscious employers use applicant tracking systems to lower the expense of agency fees without doing the follow-up work of contacting potential employees.

And this is not unusual. It happens every day.

So don’t make your job hunting more difficult than it already is.

DON’T TAKE THE BAIT! DON’T GO TO JOB FAIRS!

Ⓒ The Big Game Hunter, Inc., Asheville, NC 2011, 2017, 2024 

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