The campus milkround is well underway, but are graduate jobs fairs effective and what do students think about them?

Universities are currently playing host to hundreds of graduate recruiters at careers fairs and events nationwide, but how successful are they and what do students really think?

We asked our network of over 1,000 on-campus student headhunters (students themselves who headhunt their friends for graduate roles) for their honest opinions on careers fairs and this is what came back:

1. 87% of international students felt disappointed after attending a careers fair due to the lack of employers that sponsor visas or can give them security clearance (mainly for cyber/defence/aerospace roles).
2. On average 9 in 10 students did not attend their careers fair in their final year. The most popular reasons chosen were:
   o They didn’t know when it was on due to poor publication of the event within their university campus
   o They forgot
   o They weren’t interested in any of the attending companies
   o They had already sorted a placement
   o They were too busy
3. More than half of students surveyed said they probably wouldn’t go back to another fair after a poor first experience.

Kreena, a final-year economics student at the University of Warwick, shared with us a diary of her first careers fair…

Arrival: I’m feeling positive and looking forward to seeing which companies are going to be there. This is somewhere I am going to gain valuable insights and all my application questions are going to be answered. This is time well spent.

After 20 minutes: My spirits are still relatively high at this stage. I’ve walked the fair to get my bearings and have cherrypicked the stands that appeal to me. It is now time to start getting proactive and approach the companies I’m interested in. I am nervous but ready to begin.

After 40 minutes: I haven’t been able to speak to anyone because of the long queues and boredom/irritation is beginning to settle in. The number of leaflets/bags/pens/stress balls I’m lugging about is now just a nuisance and stressing me out. The irony is that I need these free stress balls to get through the fair! Planning my future now seems a little less tempting than climbing back in to bed.

After 1 hour: I’m flagging. Hot and sweaty, the struggle is real. I don’t know what I am supposed to ask and am beginning to doubt my ambitions of working in finance against the fierce competition in the room – mainly boys, wearing suits, handing out personal business cards and CVs in fancy plastic wallets and asking challenging questions about Brexit. Did I miss the memo? The free pens and sweets are now the only things keeping me here.

After 1 hour 20 minutes: Bored senseless. I leave disappointed, irritated and hot, carrying countless flasks and phone cases I’ll probably never use.

Conclusion: The variety of companies and industries was intriguing. The fair opened my mind to other opportunities and career paths I hadn’t previously considered, but I didn’t learn anything ground-breaking. Overall, I found the fair an intense and stressful environment and a big waste of time. I would probably have applied to all those jobs anyway, so I don’t think I would go to another one.

Following the survey, we asked some students for their ideas on how employers could improve their events (such as CV workshops and careers talks) to improve student engagement.

Tolu and Phoebe are both headhunters studying PPE at King’s College London and Oxford University respectively, who interned with us this Summer. They have put together a list of ‘dos’ and don’ts’ for graduate employers to consider when planning their next campus event:

• Provide real faces to the company – meeting and talking to employees on the grad scheme, preferably those who are graduates of that university, gives students a lot of confidence to apply
• Keep presentations short and punchy to keep us engaged in your company
• Consider how to appeal to a wider range of subjects – banking isn’t just for finance students, law isn’t just for lawyers, yet the advertising is often targeted at these students
• Hold events for underrepresented backgrounds – BAME, state school, gender, low socio-economic backgrounds etc.

• • Don’t forget to keep in touch with us after events and let us know about openings that we can apply for

• • Don’t underestimate how much we value events and presentations. Badly organised or unoriginal deliveries reflect badly

• • Don’t screen who can attend the events based on academic results. At Oxford for example, screening is often based on 1st year exam results, taken potentially 2 years ago

• Don’t – make the application processes too long for short-term positions e.g. insight days and spring weeks

Are you considering how effective careers fairs and campus events have been for your attraction? Would you like to hear from employers who have written them off altogether in favour of using peer networks on-campus?

We would be more than happy to put you contact with any of our student headhunters or employer clients within your industry to chat to you about how they have made their attraction more effective and more targeted on campus this year. Simply email elisa@sanctuarygraduates.co.uk and she can put you in touch.