The Startup Career Fair
I parked my car in the designated parking lot along with all of the aspiring individuals wanting to get a job or internship. I walked onto the blue bus where a few people have already boarded — padfolios in one hand, their buzzing phones in another.
I keep calm. I’ve been to career fairs before, but this was my first startup career fair. I figured I was going to enter a room full of hip people, students that were focused on tech (most likely CS kids), and professionals wanting to change careers. An interesting hodgepodge.
Going into this — I didn’t practice pitching my story too much. I knew I was a bit rusty, but confidence in myself and excitement got me to the front door of the incubator.
Expectations
Honestly, I was super stoked.
To give y’all some background (yes, people from Texas do say y’all), I completed my undergraduate degree in chemical engineering. From the first semester, it was known throughout the corridors of the engineering school that you need to get an internship ASAP because you needed that experience on your resume to land a job 4 years later. Kinda stressful, but that was the expectation.
Fast forward to the engineering career fair, this is what you see.
Hundreds, if not a few thousands, of kids waiting in lines to talk about their experiences in effort to please these random people and hope to up above for a call back within a couple of weeks. It is a stadium full of stress, nerves, and competition.
For this startup fair, I came into it with the impression that things would be radically different.
First off, because the scale was going to be much smaller, I had the feeling that it would be more friendly, intimate, and I guess fun. That gave me the confidence (as stated above) to go into it relying more on my personality rather than my resume.
Second, I thought I would have some really cool conversations about technology, the different start up missions, and really get to see young entrepreneur’s passion live in full force.
Third, I thought I would be there for hours because I would enjoy it.
Reality
The scale was definitely smaller — about 30 companies compared to the 100–200 I was used to seeing. One contrast I noticed was that there was not that much marketing going on. There were tables with small signs and a few people casually dressed up. I feel this area could be improved upon. If you are trying to attract top talent, you’ve got to wow people. Otherwise, it’s dull. Maybe that’s just me.
Though the scale was smaller, there were still lines of undergrads, graduates and experienced workers. Talk about immediate PTSD from my undergrad days waiting in lines to talk to recruiters who could make or break your future. Needless to say, I wasn’t feeling it.
Don’t get me wrong. Some of the conversations I had were cool, some people were open about their technology and told me details that I could relate to and got me excited. I could really hear the passion in some of the people which was refreshing, but for the most part, I was reliving those undergrad days.
I felt the need to be a suck-up, to feign interest when there was no interest coming from their end, and to go down my list of beloved accomplishments. Aagh.
From some of the companies, I got the feeling that making money was their prime motivation. And — that’s something that I learned. At the end of the day, start ups are a business that delivers value to their customers, and they will crash and burn if they don’t make money. For some reason, I had this fanciful idea that all start-up technologists are a group of idealistic people wanting to change the world. I was naive.
After these realizations, I decided to leave. I wasn’t in the mood to explain who I was, how I would randomly be a good fit for their company, and drag excitement out of my mouth while facing from undergrad PTSD.
All in all, it was an experience. Some good, some bad. I am a little bummed, but it was just one singular event. That does not detract from the fact that I still want to create something of value for the world. I still want to be an entrepreneur.
Future tip for myself and anyone who is going to do something similar: Don’t go into these things with such grand expectations. If you’re looking for a job or experience, you have you diversify your avenues. Just keep at it.
Not too long after, I ended up landing an internship with a company that wasn’t at the fair, and I am really thankful and excited about that. Sometimes you just gotta go through life gathering experiences and something will work in your favor if you keep you’re head up.
