What to expect at a job fair?

Another misconception is that you must be a student or working in the field to attend a job fair. Irrespective of one's major, educational status, or current employment, anyone is welcome to attend a job fair and explore potential career opportunities. Employers are typically interested in meeting people from a variety of different backgrounds.

What you should expect is that people attending will be dressed in business professional attire. While you don't necessarily need to wear a suit and tie, you should have on professional pants or a shirt with a nice dress shirt. Your shoes and clothes need to be clean and wrinkle-free as a career fair is a professional environment full of potential opportunities.

If you are looking to make the most out of your job fair experience, you should prepare before the job fair. First, do some research on the employers coming that day. It will look very impressive for you to walk up to one of the companies you're interested in and know the name of the hiring manager or director of the department, as well as some cool facts about the company.

Next, you will want to develop and practice your elevator speech. A career fair elevator speech is a brief introduction about yourself that should last no longer than 30 to 60 seconds. It's called an "elevator speech" because it's meant to be delivered in the time it takes to ride an elevator with someone. Be sure to introduce yourself, highlight your skills and experience, explain your career goals, and end with a call to action (e.g., ask for their business card, ask if they have any open positions).

The following list outlines a few things that you may want to take with you to your career fair so you can provide the required documents and information if a hiring manager or prospective recruiter requests them:

• Extra copies of your resume. You want a minimum of 20 printed copies of your resume.

• Targeted resumes. It's not a bad idea to create a few versions of your resume depending on what types of jobs you want to target. For example, maybe you are interested in landing a job at a bank in finance or finding a good accounting internship. Having two versions of your resume that each focus on banking and accounting can help you stand out.

• Business cards / Social Media Presence. Be sure to update your LinkedIn profile and clean up any unflattering pictures and posts that you have on any public-facing social media site.

• Your professional portfolio. Consider purchasing a professional portfolio. This can run around $20 at your local copy store. Include your resume, business cards, and employer literature that you will gather while attending the event.

• Notepad or paper and pens.

• An extra change of clothes

• Application preparation material.