The Careers Fair

3 days worth of sweaty, jobless crowds packed together in a forced smiling, brochure browsing, free-pen snatching frenzy of discovery and employability. Bring it on. I live for this kind of thing - this year's Careers Fair was my arena. Of course, my pre-fair research meant I knew exactly what was coming, and allowed me to shove, dance and side-step around those 100s who still have no idea what they want to do with the rest of their life.

It was an interesting 2 days (I felt I already had enough brochures from the first two days as to warrant not going to the last). Of course, it was only really interesting for anyone who wanted to be an accountant, lawyer or work in a bank. Or alternatively has a degree in engineering or IT. For everyone else, it was just a hot mess.

In my case, of course, it was an informative event, with more than just free pens apparently! I actually found out about a lot of law firms I hadn't even heard of before, and more about firms I had heard of. Most of the information I already knew, but things like 'We hire a lot of people out of our winter/Easter vacation schemes' was news to me (and will be followed up on). Also, meeting people from the firm was quite a good way to get an impression of their culture. It was no hard task to differentiate between the elites (Latham & Watkins, whose brochure is hardback. Hardback!) and the more normal firms like Baker and McKenzie, who were just lovely.

It really was quite important and competitive for some people though - some guys were there in suits. Suits!  And people were very pushy as well - literally shoving to get a chance to talk to some employer representatives. It was a fair, not a networking event! But I guess the value of a first impression has been very much 'impressed' on certain people (see what I did there?).

Trying to make that lasting impression really puts the pressure on some people (Yes, this is a High School Musical reference, you'll get over it.)

I was pretty much offered a job by Bloomberg though - 'You speak Chinese? Yeah, just apply and you'll probably get in' Says the Chinese guy I was chatting to. Nice.

In other news, I find I'm getting into my Applicationing (it's what I've been calling it in my head) for law firms. It's just for winter workshops/vacation schemes, but I find that it's really good practice for filling out the proper Training Contract forms, which I'm leaving till December. Besides coming up with questions that actually make you think to an irritating degree, I find the world limits on these things are real toughies - obviously they're meant to test you can be as descriptive as possible in the concisest possible way. I'm getting used to using the nuances and flexibility of the English language to my advantage; take out a 'that' here, an 'and' there and you've saved yourself about 5 words, bringing the word count down to that all important 447/450. My advice: never underestimate the power of margin manipulation when trying to make a cover letter one sheet of A4. Same with your CV - the line spacing on my CV is so narrow I'm sure it would just print out as one giant blob, but at least it fits on 2-sides of A4. Boom.


By the by, if anyone's also looking for a job, but not sure how to present yourself on a form/CV, this website has a really good personality test - http://www.shldirect.com/practice_tests.html. It seems a bit long and pointless at first (it's very repetitive), but it actually comes out with a really good report with all your strengths and weaknesses, and key words to use on applications and in interviews!
It also has a good range of practice tests if you have to do verbal/ numerical reasoning tests for applications - Check it out!