| HN Mirror

When I was in college I used to have positive sentiments towards college recruiting events too. It made me feel very special to think that these organizations wanted to engage in a dialoge of sorts and be in business with me and my fellow students. Now (15 years later), I realize that these people are basically actors in a live-action TV advertising spot and no more credible than one either.

The core is usually HR-people who do these kinds of events as a fulltime gig. They are usually very much out of touch with the rest of their organization because they do indeed spend all their time talking to students, and almost no time engaged in whatever business their organization is actually engaged in. To spice things up, they throw in one or two "real" employees. The reason they come is because there will be an HR policy whereby an employee is enouraged to spend one day per year on an activity like that to tick a box for their next promotion, so they grudgingly go there, but still secretly think of it as a waste of time. They still play their role though in the live-action TV advertising spot and put on a friendly face.

My own experience is that I was quite entrepreneurially-minded when I was in college. I wanted to be in business with a lot of organizations, just not as an employee. I used to go to all these events, hoping that they can put me in touch with people who do certain things, know certain things, get to decide certain things, etc. etc. I would always hit a brick wall. Because the people at the recruiting fair are there solely to get you to interview for the internship program or whatever. If you approach them with any other kind of request, the HR-people are neither incentivized to, nor, in most cases, able to accommodate you. For the real employees (the guy doing his one-day-a-year-stint), you as a college student, are not worth actually investing time into, so they won't do anything for you either.

In other words: Their presence at the recruitment event is not the presence of a human being that wants to engage with you on a human level, nor the presence of an organization that wants to be in business with you, but rather the presence of a robot who can accept your application for the internship program and who is not programmed for any other kind of interaction with you.

You don't need to take my word for it, either. You can easily put it to the test.

Next time you go to one of these events, bring a pencil and say: "I will happily interview for your internship program, but as a sign that you are SERIOUS about wanting to engage in a business relationship with me, I would like you to use company money to buy this pencil from me for 50 cents".

Witnessing what happens next will hopefully rid you of feeling special. -- I can assure you, you won't sell a single pencil. If you do: That's the company you should work for.