[Groxx]

You may hear of un-published openings (almost every single instance, in my experience - they save some for the fairs), and you've gone past the initial HR barrier if you sell yourself well as a person. Bypassing hoops you have to jump through helps immensely.

[iuygtfrikuj]

Depends on the company - pretty much any outfit large enough to have a professional booth with HR drones is going to be by-the-book.

Another problem if you are anywhere nice is that the HR dept treat this as a holiday, so you are getting a bunch of people who are in your town to drink, stay in a nice hotel and 'bond'. Having to talk to a few smelly students isn't the highlight of the trip.

[Groxx]

True, but this one is about an on-campus / campus-organized fair:

>Atalasoft exhibited at the UMass Campus Center Career Blast Fair (say that 3x fast) yesterday, and holy smokes, do you want jobs.

Those are frequently far less "nice", and being smelly won't work anywhere. And even smaller businesses still send HR-oriented people more frequently than people they're paying to produce the core of what they sell.