Ask HN: What's your experience with career fairs?

I have attended several over the years. When the economy is bad it is just a depressing place to be. The last one I attended, I was surprised how many techies were looking for work. Feb 2008, I thought the job market was strong. Imagine my surprise when I saw my boss there! LOL and she was truely shocke to see me there.

There were only 6 employeer looking for people and must have been 50 people looking for a job. I talked with one company which was MUCH closer to home.

Interview was successful. The job I was leaving then gave me a significant raise (13%), which had they paid me that before I would not have been looking. I had made myself excited about the possible new adventure. The new job asked me how much pay I expected, of course I quoted the new number. Which they offered me 8% above that.

So I took it. Then less than a year later the bums laid me off.

So in the end, in this economy - I would definitely go to job fairs.

Okay, I haven't exactly attended many over the years, but from the ones I did attend, my experience is that they were moderately fun to walk around, had a few interesting companies there... and didn't really lead to any new jobs or offers.

I think that's because they're too broad. I mean, web development (and software engineering in general) has a ton of different technologies and job roles involved, hence about 90% of those on offer will almost always end up being irrelevant to your skillset, especially since most companies involved in these want someone that can come onboard and start being productive immediately after they're hired.

Still, I think a more 'specialised' career fair might work out though. Something dedicated to a certain language or field of interest rather than a general market (like tech/startups/media) or what not.