- I don’t know, I will ask her. She is not the best go-getter…which is why I’m going against my general rule of hands-off parenting and involving myself in this at all.
- Yes, there is a coop office and a specific advisor for her major, who she does have a relationship with. I will encourage her to reach out to them this week and ask for strategy suggestions.
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Is this normal? The university I work at, our job fairs don’t have apps or signups for interview or meetup slots.
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At my S25s school the only time there is in app for signup is when they do virtual career fairs and you have to sign up for a specific time slot. I feel like they did two or three in real life fairs, and one virtual.
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For any she can’t get to, she should try to find out the name of the people at the job fair. They are almost certainly also on LinkedIn. Then post fair she can message them on LinkedIn and say something similar to the note above “I was really interested in your company and had hoped to stop by when you were at the career fair at X University. Unfortunately, I had a long lab at the same time and couldn’t attend. I would really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you regarding your company and the skill I would bring for an internship.”
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But one (BIG) exception is if you are applying to a government job, and the requirements are ‘experience with answering phones, greeting visitors…” you HAVE to list them all out. AI is reading the resumes and it is looking for the buzz words. You need the bullet points. It is okay if resume is longer.
My daughter graduating from college didn’t have a lot of experience (one summer engineering job and working for a professor during the school year) and of course put those on the resume. At her interview, ALL they wanted to talk about was her experience playing lacrosse. We practiced all the typical interview questions and no one came up. They didn’t even have questions about her course work or what she liked about engineering, just about lacrosse.
You never know what the interviewer is going to connect with.
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Two points on this:
For people applying to feds - resumes are now limited to two pages by exec order / OPM guidance. Even for people with 20 years experience. So choose those words well.
And same with the athletics. My son had his collegiate rowing experience and club rugby on the resume - those get a disproportionate amount of questions and comments compared to his summer internships. But I think it’s ok because both for his summer 25 internship and permanent post grad job those were the interviews that asked the most questions about the sports (compared to the places he interviewed and got no offers)
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Not sure but that’s what Purdue had when my D was a student. You could sign up for a certain number of slots and then any additional companies you had to wait in line for.
My D is on the recruiting team for her company and says most valuable yime is in the pre-fair activities. For engineering, SWE chapters tend to do pre events the day before the big career fairs.
Co op had its own fai as well!
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A friend’s son was mainly asked about playing hockey during his interview for a law internship. He enjoyed talking about hockey but he was a bit disappointed that law or law school related questions were not asked.
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Frankly, you need to get an interview. I used to work for a well known tv network, that was all the rage when I was there.
What I do now isn’t reievant to it but it will always stay on my resume.
People ask about it, who I worked with, what were they like etc.
I interviewed for a job internally 5 or 6 years ago and 20+ years after, it was a topic of discussion - wow you worked there ?
If it gets them excited to talk to you, it’s a good thing….
Team sports - lots of positives likely related to an internship - being a part of a team. There might have been a reason for the line of questioning but even if not, if hockey got him in the door - then FANTASTIC.
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That was his interview and he got the internship at that big law firm.
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My S’s school career fairs sound like they were similar…some long lines/no appointments.
She can reach out to the reps prior to the career fair via Handshake, assuming this school uses Handshake. The people who will be there from each company are often identified in advance.
Once at the fair she will have to make her choices by the length of the line. Make sure she scans her event ID at each booth and/or registers thru the QR code at each employer’s booth (again, assuming this school uses these technologies.)
These career fairs definitely favor extroverts, I hope your D can see it as a growth opportunity.
And another in the sample with two athlete kids who were often only asked about their sport during interviews.
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I think sports, or other unique things, sometimes help you stick out and be memorable. I used to do lots of interviews - we were seeking to hire 100 senior people per year, I was the last round of interviews and my panel (multiple panels) probably got 75ish interviews per year. These were all people in their 40s and 50s generally, with generally the same qualifications. It was my job to sort of get people at ease while we walked from the waiting area to the interview room and if there was something funky on the resume I asked. I talked to a number of really professionally experienced people about Eagle Scout Projects, one guy about ultramarathon running, and several about coaching their kids teams. Not at all relevant to the job we were hiring, but it showed me they could maintain a conversation and it helped all of them to stand out.
So pivoting to our kids, I would always suggest keeping a random thing that they are passionate about on the resume. That might be the thing that catches someone’s eye and if they get asked it will give them a good jumping off point to show their passion.
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My daughter had a section called Hobbies and Interests.
I’m often surprised what people leave off their resume. Years ago I was interviewing someone without a ton of experience and asked about a gap on her resume. Turned out she’d been in rabbinical school which suddenly made her much more interesting! More recently I was interviewing someone whose first language was not English for a position that required good English language writing skills and he casually mentioned his first bachelor’s was in English literature prior to coming to the US - he’d only put his second bachelor’s, earned here, on his resume! Knowing that made me way more confident in hiring him and I’ve never understood why he left it off.
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Looking at my son’s college resume -
Under Experience, he listed his two internships and summer job after first year. He did not list his HS supermarket job.
Under Activities, he listed his ecoCAR club and a contest he won in the Geography Contest.
I’m sure people get hired with all sort of different looking resumes - different styles, formats, and more.
My kid’s resumes look more like mine from 30 years ago - whereas today they look different. But they still worked for both of them.
For the volunteer role, he is unsure it should be in experience mainly because he thinks it’s not as important as his internships. Since it is ongoing, it ends up at the top, and he would rather have an internship listed first. I don’t know that it matters enough, but thought I’d ask here.
I’d put under activities personally. I’d have that section to separate. Especially if the role is part time.
I saw this post from a CMU professor and it directionlly makes a lot of sense.
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I know that you were referring to undergraduate school interviews, but for many law schools, interview slots are awarded based on a bidding process or based on pre-screened resumes.
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I interviewed with the largest law firm based in the largest city in that state which was also the state capitol. I had an unusual resume. The entire 35 minute interview consisted of variations of asking me “would you really move to this city.” Not kidding. True story.
Regarding discussion of sports during law firm interviews: One prominent Houston law firm’s interview consisted almost entirely of questions about professional baseball; that firm represented the Houston Astros.
The point is that many law firm interviews have little to do with one’s ability to practice law after surviving the initial screening.
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