A Job Seeker’s Guide to Navigating Nonprofit Career Fairs

JOB MARKET

By Lara L. McDavit

Christopher Rademacher left the nonprofit career fair last May at George Mason University feeling

triumphant. Despite arriving at the Arlington, Va., campus late and missing some of the recruiters he had wanted to meet, the 35-year-old master’s of business administration graduate, who sought work with an environmental nonprofit organization, felt sure he would land a job offer. His instincts were correct: He eventually got three offers from the recruiters he met.

He accepted a job as a grass-roots campaigner for the environmental group Clean Water Action, whose headquarters are in Washington. Although he chose not to stay with the organization long, Mr. Rademacher, who now works as a program associate at the American Educational Research Association, says he plans to attend nonprofit career fairs in the future. “Career fairs put a human touch to the résumé, and allow you to talk to somebody face-to-face,” he says. In addition, he says, they allow job seekers to learn more about open positions.

Despite those advantages, many job seekers don’t attend career fairs, say career counselors and fair organizers. Because fairs are typically sponsored by universities and colleges, those institutions may focus on promoting the events to students and neglect to inform people beyond their campuses. Also, many experienced job seekers may assume that career-fair recruiters are offering only entry-level, seasonal, or volunteer positions — an assumption that may prove incorrect, and can keep older job seekers from making contacts and learning about nonprofit career paths, says Kate Kuczynsky, a career counselor at Villanova University, in Pennsylvania.

For both the novice and experienced job seeker, career fairs can be daunting — from choosing which charities to approach to gathering the courage to meet recruiters. Career counselors, fair organizers, and job seekers offer the following tips to make the experience more successful and less stressful:

Establish goals. Job seekers should begin by examining their educational backgrounds, past volunteer and professional experiences, personal passions, and short- and long-term career goals, says Gregory Hatch, a career counselor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “‘What am I looking for when I get to that job fair? ‘” he says, outlining the topics career-fair participants need to consider. “‘If I work for a nonprofit organization, what are the kinds of experiences I want to get? I want to work in this general area with a certain population; these are certain skills I bring to that.’ They need to focus on what they want to do.”

Conduct research on the recruiters. If possible, candidates should get beforehand from the fair’s sponsor a list of the organizations scheduled to attend a particular career fair, and look for more information on the ones they find most in tune with their interests. Action Without Borders, a New York nonprofit group that has sponsored dozens of fairs nationwide, profiles each organization that recruits at its fairs on its Web site, Idealist.org. Each profile includes the group’s mission, a link to its Web site, current job openings, and contact information.

Research can help job seekers plot a strategy to make the most of the fair’s limited time frame, rather than simply hitting every booth. Trisha Fields, a job seeker in the Washington area, says Web research helped her narrow her search before an Action Without Borders fair she attended last May.

“I looked at the programs and positions for which they were hiring, as well as their overall mission and focus,” she says. “If I was interested, I talked to them at the fair.”

Her research helped her cause: She won an interview with the Academy for Educational Development, an international development organization in Washington. Although she didn’t get the program-associate job, she says, she was one of two finalists for the position.

A job seeker who has done research — and can show off that knowledge by asking informed questions about a charity — will stand out in the crowd, says Moselle Horiuchi, a human-resources manager at the Plymouth Housing Group, which serves the homeless in Seattle. Ms. Horiuchi, who has recruited at career fairs, says she is impressed by job seekers who display knowledge of her charity. “It says somebody is serious, that somebody has taken the time to do the research on the position, on the agency, and on the job fair itself,” she says. “And, if they are remotely qualified, I tag those résumés and I really consider them, because they show initiative.”

By contrast, even well-qualified people will get rejected if they show the don’t know much about potential employers. “The biggest turnoff for me is come up and be totally uninformed about what my agency does,” says Susan Houch, director of national services at Girls Inc., a national nonprofit youth-development organization with headquarters in New York. “It is obvious that they are looking for a job, but for them to speak to me without knowing anything about Girls Inc. means they are just applying to anything and they are not targeting their search to a particular organization.”

Bring customized résumés and cover letters. Everyone knows that a well-written résumé is essential when applying for any job. But many job seekers don’t tailor their efforts, and thus miss out on an opportunity to make an impact.

For instance, the “objective” statement at the top of a résumé is a chance to directly address an employer, says Ms. Horiuchi. She is impressed by an objective statement that delineates the skills a job seeker can contribute to her organization. “A statement like, ‘I think I would have a lot to contribute, ‘ or ‘I would be interested in working for your organization, ‘ is too general,” she says. “That does not tell my anything. Give me specifics.” (A cover letter, she notes, presents another opportunity for candidates to explicitly state how their skills can help a particular charity.)

The career-history segment of the résumé, says Ms. Horiuchi, should include both the month and the year that various jobs began and ended — simply listing the years, she says, could disguise very short tenures. Be prepared to explain a long list of short-lived jobs, she says: “I want to know if you are a job hopper and why. Is it appropriate — due to school, personal demands, internships?” Don’t forget, she adds, to list volunteer work, and any skills gained through those experiences.

Be comprehensive, but not exhaustive, cautions Pamela Flamer, a staff recruiter at the Kennedy-Krieger Institute, a nonprofit organization in Baltimore that serves children with special needs and emotional problems. She recalls one job candidate who arrived for an interview a little too prepared: “They brought in their laptop to do a Power Point presentation, and they gave me their résumé, and it was like 45 pages long, with every certificate they have earned from high school until now.”

Dress appropriately. Although some career-fair organizers tell attendees to dress as though they were interviewing for jobs, there is no standard for fair wear. Since many nonprofit organizations pride themselves on their casual office culture, a job seeker dressed in jeans and a T-shirt might blend in easily. Jaime Carrillo, nonprofit-career coordinator at Action Without Borders, encourages job seekers who attend his group’s fairs to dress as they normally would, and as a result, attendees’ attire ranges from jeans to suits.

Most recruiters are aware that attendees at a job fair on a college campus will be dressed more casually than those who attend a fair in another venue, because many campus attendees are students who stop by the fair while coming or going to class. However, dressing too casually could give the impression that the job seeker isn’t taking the occasion seriously, says Kate Whetman, a career counselor at the University of Utah, in Salt Lake City. When counseling students, she recommends that career-fair attendees adopt “business casual” wear, such as slacks, button-down or polo shirts, and leather shoes in lieu of sneakers.

Relax. Meeting potential employers can be very intimidating, even for the most outgoing people, because so much depends on a five-minute conversation. On many occasions, Mr. Hatch says, he has observed job seekers at on-campus fairs simply freeze up. “Some of the students are like airplanes in a holding pattern over O’Hare International Airport,” he says. “They kind of walk around in a circle, trying to work up the nerve to go in.”

Try to remember that recruiters want to talk to the people at the fair. “The less experience [job seekers] have working with recruiters, they feel that when they go up to speak that the recruiter will try to trick them to somehow narrow the crowd down,” says Ms. Horiuchi. This is never the case, she says: “They would love to go back to their office and say, ‘I spoke to 80 students and they were all great candidates.’”

To quell job seekers’ last-minute butterflies, many universities that host career fairs send their career counselors to offer last-minute advice or encouragement to nervous attendees.

Practice a pitch. Job seekers should enter a career fair as if it were a job interview. However, they should also know that very few nonprofit recruiters come to such fairs intending to conduct full-scale interviews, because of the time constraints, says Mr. Carrillo. Instead, they want to make contact with as many potential recruits as they can, which means each job seeker has only a few minutes to make a positive first impression on a recruiter, tell them a bit about themselves, and learn about current job openings. Ms. Kuczynsky advises that attendees prepare a five-minute talk about themselves — one that introduces them to the recruiter, tells a bit about their qualifications, and their career goals.

Ask about employers’ current needs — and be open-minded. Conversations with recruiters can reveal opportunities that might not be immediately obvious. Many job seekers will dismiss an organization they are interested in because their ideal job is unavailable, or they feel underqualified for those that are open. Ms. Flamer, of the Kennedy-Krieger Institute believes that is a mistake. “You may be able to work your way up,” she says. “Just keep an open mind about whatever is available.

Show some passion. Enthusiasm for a charity’s mission can help get a job seeker into a nonprofit employer’s good graces — and may even trump a candidate’s limited skills, says Ms. Horiuchi, especially when filling entry-level jobs. “It is so refreshing to hear and to see on peoples’ faces and voices how interested they about the agency and position they are applying for,” she says. “This is something I cannot get on paper.”

Ask recruiters about their work. Even if an organization doesn’t offer job opportunities suited to candidates’ immediate needs, they can still gain a lot from making contact with recruiters. When the University of Utah held a career fair last fall that offered mostly entry-level and seasonal jobs that were of little interest to its students, many of whom are already supporting families, Ms. Whetman nevertheless encouraged attendees to query recruiters. “This is a good chance to talk to the head of PR for the Girl Scouts, who actually has a really cool job, which does not happen to be open right now,” she says. “But, you can pick her brain about her career path, learn how she got her experience, and take advantage of the fact a lot of people who work for a nonprofit are ‘sofities’ and love their organizations.”

Know when to move on. Keep each conversation short. “It probably should last three to four minutes,” says Ms. Houch. “If it goes beyond that, it is either too long, or else I am really interested in them, and I am keeping the conversation going.”

Listen for cues that recruiters are ready to move on. “I usually try the approach of ‘I have your résumé’ or ‘please send me something. I will put it in my file, ‘ and ‘I don’t do the actual hiring and the actual supervisor selects the candidate, ‘” says Ms. Horiuchi. “I will also say things like, ‘If what you say is documented on your résumé — great! The person screening your résumé will see that.’”

Showing consideration for the other people waiting their turn can win points for job seekers, she says. “At some of the career fairs — and this happened with two people we actually hired — these two individuals came by and spoke to me, saw that I was busy or saw that other folks had come up, so they would leave and come back,” she says. “To me that is very motivating because they had seen something that was interesting to them, fits their skill set, and decided to pursue it.”

Don’t “stalk” recruiters. There’s a fine line between persistence and being a pest. Ms. Horiuchi says she has had certain fair attendees drop by her booth again and again in the course of a day under some flimsy pretext or another. “I have noticed that some people will come to our table and then they’ll go to the table next to us,” she says. “They will hang out at that table a little longer, and seem like they are just looking through the information, but really paying more attention to what is going on over at our table. They’re trying to maybe hear if I am going to tell another person the same thing I told them.”

Follow up. Pick up recruiters’ business cards and ask for their e-mail addresses, recommends Ms. Whetman. “Take advantage of that opportunity afterwards to strut your stuff,” she says, “just as you put effort into your little presentation about yourself when you meet someone.”

Ask recruiters whether they prefer to be contacted by phone, e-mail, or regular mail, and follow their preferences. And either call or send a message no later than three business days after the event, recommends Ms. Horiuchi. “That tells me this person is really interested,” she says. “At times, I have made a special note of that on their application packet.”

Do you attend nonprofit career fairs? How helpful have they been to your job search? Share your thoughts in the Job Market online forum.