handbook/handbook-main/guides/hiring/career_fairs.txt

# Made Tech guide to career fairs

## What does a careers fair look like?

There are many stalls setup as a circuit around in a big hall. Students pass by the stalls asking questions about job opportunities and internships.

Most stalls have two representatives standing to the side or in front of them. Standing behind the desk seemed to put too much of a barrier between students and representatives. Stalls typically had table clothes of the companies colors over them, some with logos. All stalls had big banners behind them with bullet point info about the companies and job opportunities at eye level. A lot of stalls had sweets or chocolate on them along with leaflets and swag ranging from totes, USB sticks, popcorn, pens, paper pads, rubix cubes. Some stalls had challenges like solving a rubix cube with a leaderboard. Some had examples of apps they'd built on laptops. A few stalls had additional podiums they brought a long. Our Google Cardboard were another example of things on tables.

Typically the staff at the desks were recruiters or HR managers rather than people who actually work in engineering. Companies like Ford, Army, Navy, solicitors, Bloomberg and BAE systems are there. Many wore suits although some seemed much more down to earth. The big brands were the big hitters with students swarming around them for more information. Thats not to say we didn't also have 5 or so swarms during the day.

Most students want to ask about what we do. Some are Computer Science grads, some are mechanical engineering but still interested in code. Some students are part way through their undergraduate years (3-4 years) and some will be doing postgraduate degrees (~2 years). Some want internships, some want graduate positions. Typically everyone wanted a description of what we work on but some ask about salary and length of internships and other things like day to day activities or work environment.

On average most students stay from anywhere from 1 minute to 5 minutes. Some just want to grab leaflets but we tried opening conversations with everyone who approached. We tried talking to bigger crowds if many approached at once. Everyone even the shy ones appreciated us approaching them and having a conversation. A lot of people seemed a lot more interested in us after talking to them, most had no idea what we were about from the signage.

## The patter(n)

At the start we weren't sure on how to begin conversations but throughout the day we built up a fairly consistent conversation structure that worked for us:

 - Ask whether the student is studying compsci or has touched any code?
 - Describe the fact we primariy build software, from anything like e-commerce stores, to complex warehousing APIs and even back office tools.
 - Highlight the fact we go into other businesses to help their teams deliver better software faster. Several times we described moving organisations from delivering software every 3 months to every day.
 - Go into detail about our code dojos, hack days, retreat, blogging and advise them to read our blog and github to see how we work.
 - Provide Google Cardboard to take a look at the office.
 - Try to take details or at least give a leaflet to every person who approaches.
 - Also invite people to our office, to code dojos or whatever else if you fancy.
 
## Things to try next time

 - Name badges with Made Tech logo on them
 - Sweets are very popular like cadburys celebrations but should also provide vegan alternative too (biscuits or something)
 - More leaflets, need around 200 probably
 - Use laptop or two for taking contact details as tablet slow
 - Challenge that takes maximum of a minute to complete
 
## Questions we need to answer

 - How long are internships and when do they start?
 - What does our graduate scheme look like?
 - What are the salaries available to interns and graduates?
 - Do we have any non-technical roles available?

## Notes for next year

 - Banners should contain information about the fact we build web applications and help other companies do that
 - Banner text should be at eye line as a lot of people were straining and bending over to read the text. Students seem to use this to wittle out companies, we used it as an opportunity to strike up conversations but worth making it a little easier at a glance.
 - More technical attractions or gadgets or swag. AutomationLogic had a popcorn machine and beer opening USB sticks.