Takeaways from the Asia Pacific Virtual Career Fair

By: Ngai Yeung ‘23

An odd and extensive game of corporate speed dating, USC’s semesterly career fairs have always been one of the biggest events on campus. But as all events were moved online this spring, the school continued to host a virtual career fair as well as a smaller, separate one for the Asia Pacific region on April 23rd PDT, the latter of which I attended; here are my takeaways from this novel experience.

You still have to “line up”

Once you make an account on Brazen, the virtual career fair platform, you’re directed to a lobby that has cards listing all participating companies. These cards tell you how many representatives from the companies are available at the moment, how many students are waiting to chat with them, and how long the wait time is. Just like in-person career fairs, big companies such as Bloomberg and ByteDance (parent company of TikTok) had long lines upwards of a hundred people at one point, but with the magic of technology, you could now wait in multiple lines at once. You’re free to do other things in the meantime as Brazen notifies you with a ding when you reach the front of the line and a chat begins – just remember to leave your sound on.

Asia Pacific? More like China Career Fair

As I scanned the list of companies participating, one thing that stood out was the prevalence of Chinese firms. Among the 35 firms that participated, around two-thirds were Chinese firms,  and some even had their company description and job posts written in just Chinese. Naturally, most positions were also based in China, though there were a handful of placements in Tokyo and Hong Kong. This makes sense as out of the 12,000 international students on campus, more than half are from China – still, it would’ve been nice to see posts for other parts of Asia (Singapore seems nice).

Easily browse job openings

One of my favorite features of this online career fair is how I get to see the positions each company is offering once I click into their booth. This is a great way to discover suitable roles offered by less well-known companies, whose booths I would not have otherwise visited if at a physical career fair. And though I didn’t find anything this way – most positions were in either finance or tech, neither of which is my vocation  – I appreciated the function.

Chatting becomes a lot more formal

I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I spent a long time searching for SCREENSHOTS of career fair conversations before I joined the queues. To be fair, I never went to any of the past career fairs, but I always figured I’d just go with the flow and improvise depending on how the recruiter reacts. But now that I can’t gauge their body language or ooze charisma (just kidding), I realized I had no idea how a conversation should be like. I ended up spending a considerable amount of time crafting my first message so I could copy and paste it right away, hoping I could deliver a good first impression via text.

During the chat, I was especially careful with my grammar and tone, trying to maintain a balance between coming off as professional but not pretentious. I’m probably overthinking this, but I really wanted the position and so I still wonder to this day if adding a smiley face emoji was appropriate. This took a lot of time and I couldn’t get that many questions in (there is a 10-minute time limit for each chat), and it’s also harder to form personal connections or speak more casually via text.

Get a transcript of your conversation

On the bright side, you could search up information about the company while talking to the representative or have a list of suggested questions right with you, and nobody would know. But even better is how you could retain a transcript of your conversation after the chat is over. That way, you don’t have to worry about recalling what you discussed and can refer back to it at any time.

There’s also a place where you can send any last thoughts to the representative in case you didn’t get to finish your sentence before the 10 minutes elapsed.

Talk to multiple recruiters simultaneously

I didn’t get to try this (it must be chaotic!), but what may perhaps be the biggest advantage of virtual career fairs over physical ones is how one could do so much more with the same amount of time. While you may spend a whole day lining up for just a few big companies before, now you can talk to as many companies as you’d like provided that you can handle the heavy multitasking – it’d be awkward if you accidentally sent the wrong company a question intended for another.

Some companies never showed up

I was at the fair when it kicked off at 9am my time, but I noticed that some companies didn’t have any representatives at their booth. Fair enough, I thought, maybe they’re just running late and will show up later. But when I revisited the fair a few hours later, I noticed that these companies still had zero representatives at their booth. It wasn’t until I clicked on them to read more that I realized the companies were “NO LONGER PARTICIPATING”. In my opinion, Brazen should just remove the companies that never showed up from the lobby so as to not confuse students who are still waiting in line.

Conclusion

Overall, it was a unique experience, and I’m definitely grateful that USC is still hosting career fairs especially given the current economic situation. The biggest downsides to me are the lack of personal, face-to-face connection and room for casual conversation, but the advantage that comes with speaking to so many more employers for the same amount of time may just offset the disadvantage. I’m still undecided about which format is better; what do you think? But anyhow, I sincerely wish everyone who’s finding a job now good luck, and here’s to having the option to attend career fairs in person soon once again.

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