A fair warning that today’s blog post will be a relatively raw and come from a very personal perspective as I work through the emotional roller coaster and current mental space I’m in coming out of the event.
After all, businesses, companies, startups, are all run by humans.
Disappointed
Is a harsh way to summarize how I felt wrapping it up. I might be a little hard on myself, but I feel like I’ve really let down the companies and the job seekers that evening:
- The venue was definitely too small for 423 people.
- It was too warm, too loud
- And the piece that let me down the most was the inability for the presentations to be heard with the weak audio system.
I was really looking forward to sharing my story and setting the tone for the evening to inspire job seekers to be inquisitive in their approach to finding a more purposeful career. I was also eager to have the companies share their stories and highlight the amazing impact they created through business.
Feedback from companies
- Attendees still “sprayed and prayed”. Many of them still just wanted “a job” and weren’t value-focused.
- Mostly junior level candidates (but as expected).
- Lots of developers/people interested in marketing.
- Water!
- Notify speakers of their order and have them on standby.
Feedback from attendees
- There was some greenwashing, some companies didn’t really seem impactful.
- Many companies defaulted to pointing people to their website and their regular recruiting pipeline. They didn’t appreciate it as it didn’t give them an opportunity to really engage with the company and stand out from the regular candidates that apply through the current channels.
Lessons and improvements for the future:
All valuable feedback, and everything I take to heart (though probably a little too personally even though I know it’s not personal). Thanks everyone for being transparent and taking the time to provide feedback, I really appreciate it. Besides the obvious improvements I’ll make from the feedback above, below are some other considerations:
- Here’s a recording I made of the speech I was planning on giving. It might give you some ideas on how to adjust your approach to job search and self-discovery.
- Here are my thoughts on greenwashing/defining impact.
- Here are some tips on how to approach and get hired by companies from a value/purpose centric perspective.
- Do a better job sourcing for a more diverse group of organizations (I would have loved to have gotten some non-profits, some food companies, environmental companies).
- Have the presentations at the start of the event to set the tone and hold attention. Have the stage in the centre of the room instead of on a far end.
- Nametags for company representatives.
Grateful
It’s not all negative, I’m extremely humbled, grateful, and impressed with all the volunteers who stepped up and made it as seamless as possible. There could have been many other things that could have gone wrong.
- Juan did an amazing job soliciting volunteer interest, we had more than enough for the evening.
- Daniel and Mayra made sure volunteers were assigned to roles and had rotating shifts so that they could also get a chance to meet the companies.
- Registration team did a great job tracking everyone and getting people through the door as quickly as possible (although almost too quickly sometimes).
- SFU RADIUS for welcoming us into such a beautiful space.
- Preview Careers for their amazing support finding companies, supporting me with logistics, and coordinating the event.
Without your help, I would have definitely been a lot more stressed and disorganized.
Emboldened
Hey, I made it happen! Though it isn’t perfect, and I haven’t found the right solution yet, at least there is momentum. Just get started, be receptive to learning and improving. Make stuff happen instead of sitting on an idea.
Lost
Now that the event is over, and as we wait to see if any hires come out of it, I am left to wonder what’s next. Entrepreneurship isn’t always a surefooted path to success, on the outside, while many CEOs and founders look like they know what they’re doing – most are just as uncertain as I am and are always actively testing and learning to find their way.
It’s something that I’ve come to embrace but still makes me uncomfortable.
The next few weeks will be spent in reflection to ensure I can move forward while continuing to add value to both companies and job seekers in a meaningful way.
The mission (or the WHY) still hasn’t changed. The test now is to figure out the best way to do it (the HOW).
Some ideas and options:
- Impact Career Fair 2020 in Singapore
- Continue listing opportunities on the job portal, traffic is up to 4,000 monthly visits but still not at a stage where I’m confident enough that it makes sense to ask companies to pay for a listing.
- Explore consulting as a service to support companies that want to improve their recruiting practices to attract more value-aligned talent.
Thanks for reading! I’m fine and not depressed, just need some time to decompress and reorient myself 🙂 Stay tuned for new developments!
If you have any thoughts, ideas, or would like to work with me, feel free to drop me a message: chin@valuehiring.com
Great post as usual, Chin. Thanks for your radical candour dissecting the event and your own post event decompression. And congrats on a successful event overall! As anyone who has organized an event of even 20 pax knows, Murphy runs rampant at these things; a few hiccups are not unusual. Of the 423 candidates and 17 companies that turned up, I’m confident the vast majority derived great value from the career fair. Amazing to think of the 3,807 interactions you facilitated in the space of 2 hours assuming that each candidate interacted with even half of the companies present 🙂 Btw, if it makes you feel any better, I was at an major academic event recently and a distinguished professor made a presentation where all his graphics did not display. He did an amazing job explaining a complex topic using black and white slides with a few words of text. Finally, with about 2 slides left out of 20, the AV guy tried a different presentation format and the graphics kicked in!
Thanks for your words of encouragement Adrian 🙂 And of course, thanks for helping out for the event too!
Hi Chin, As I mentioned after the event during the volunteer huddle, the event was definitely a success! I believe that for a free and walk-in event like what we had, we did score an A- / B+ which is not bad per se. My few observations for improvement are as follows:
1. We should do a pre-event survey with recruiting companies who commit to the fair as to what are their expectations – promotion of the brand or finding talent. If they are promoting their brand for visibility, places like DownTown locations could be good as several people just pass by to see what is there to offer. If finding talent, giving more time, more privacy and interaction time between hirer and talent are required for the success of the fair.
2. Selection of venue should be done with the ability to scale up / down if necessary depending on the outcome of point #1 above.
3. If we want to target serious crowd and good outcome of the fair (aka recruitments, leads, etc.), there could be a small registration fee and some money spent on providing something in return to the attendees – may be a talk by a prominent recruiter, some useful book, etc. While this fee could filter the number of attendees, I believe, value and success rate of the fair could be much higher. I remember an event organized by a famous investment advisor – they did not announce the venue until last minute, charged a fee of $10 per person and $15 per couple – attendance and event were roaring success. They could select the venue according to the final registration count!
4. There were at least a couple of dozen people who approached me for water during the event. It was very disappointing that the water fountain was on the second floor. We have to be more user-friendly to succeed.
5. If I am you, I will try to succeed a few times locally, develop a niche before going international where logistical challenges could be much more severe.
Having said the above, what you achieved is superb and good luck with your new ventures!
Thanks for sharing your detailed feedback Kesavan and thanks again for supporting 🙂
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