Walked into a career fair at a convention center and it was just 15 booths selling courses

I went to this big career event downtown last month thinking I'd meet actual recruiters from real companies. Got there after paying $12 for parking and it was literally 15 tables of people trying to sell me their $400 resume review packages or $2000 certification courses. One guy tried to pitch me a 'career acceleration program' that I'm pretty sure was just a PDF of LinkedIn tips. There was exactly 1 legit employer there and they were hiring for a call center role paying $14 an hour. Has anyone else run into these fake career fairs where nobody is actually hiring?

3 comments

3 Comments

cora_west513d ago

So you're saying these things are basically traps for people who don't know better? I used to think the same way as mason.drew. I honest to God believed those resume review booths were helpful and the courses were just expensive but maybe worth it. But then I went to one of these 'fairs' and a guy tried to sell me a 'career blueprint' for $800. I asked him what companies he worked with and he couldn't name one. Just kept pushing the program. That's when it clicked. The whole thing was a sales funnel, not a hiring event. The call center job was real but the rest was just people selling hope to desperate folks.

angelamurphy13d ago

Wow I read an article about this exact thing - turns out some "career fairs" are just lead generation for training companies. @mason.drew I get the whole prep work point but $12 parking plus walking past 14 sales pitches before finding one entry level job is rough.

mason.drew13d ago

Hold on a second, let me come at this from the other side. Give the organizers a little bit of credit here. Most people walking into a career fair don't even have a resume that's worth the paper it's printed on, so a quick review service isn't the worst thing in the world. Those certification courses, while pricey, do sometimes have actual material that can get you ahead if you actually put the time in. And honestly, if a $14 an hour call center job is a "real" job to you, then what's wrong with the guy selling a program that might help you get something better? You paid $12 to park, walked into a free event, and got a reality check on what you actually need to work on. It sounds like the problem wasn't the booths, it was that you showed up expecting a job to fall in your lap without doing any of the prep work first.