An NPC’s Guide to the Business Career Fair

Once a semester, for two days, the aspiring business magnates of Texas A&M University will briefly leave their natural habitat and enter the wild, instructed to find employment. They emerge from Wehner in dress pants and blazers, armed with a load of resumes and the desperation of a fifth-year senior already rejected by six companies.

The event begins days before you actually arrive. Maybe a week before, you’ll update the resume you haven’t touched in 4 months. Then you’ll update your resume again. You’ll ask someone to look at your resume. They’ll suggest changing the formatting. You’ll change the formatting. Someone else tells you to add more numbers. You’ll add numbers. At some point, you have edited your resume so many times, you’ve cured cancer, solved climate change and somehow increased your internship impact by 400%.

 

Eventually, you print 37 copies only to realize as you walk in that you printed the unedited version, and you wasted a third of your printing dollars. You have to bring enough for every company you want to talk to, but you will never actually create a list of the companies you like, so instead you’ll just settle for bringing enough resumes to apply for every job in Texas.

 

When you get to the entrance of the hall, you’ll see a line resembling that of the MSC Panda Express. You will be surrounded by accounting-finance double majors who’ve done six internships, have a 4.0 GPA and already have a full-time job lined up. 

 

But don’t let that shake you. 

 

The Career Fair is for everyone!

Probably.

Your first objective is to find a company you actually want to work for. This sounds simple until you see the size of the crowd. There are hundreds of people standing in lines that appear to lead nowhere. You check the map. You check it again. You locate the company you want, see the line is maybe 40 people long, and decide you never actually wanted to work there.

 

You move on to a company with no line. 

 

You’ll approach a recruiter, immediately blank on the elevator pitch you’ve rehearsed a million times and forget who you are. At some point you’ll start rambling about your entire life story and a project you did in sophomore year that you’re not entirely sure applies to the company.

 

After a few minutes, the recruiter will ask for your resume. You hand it over with the sincere hope that they’ll look at it, recognize you as a diamond in the rough and hire you on the spot. They place it on the table behind them.

 

“Great talking to you. Make sure you apply online.”

 

You have successfully completed one interaction. The process repeats. At some point you see a company you care about. You researched them, know exactly which position you want and have a question prepared demonstrating both initiative and genuine interest. 

 

There are 27 people in line. You can probably just apply online.

 

You have completed the first half of the Career Fair. It’s time for the second, more important half: free merchandise. 

 

You came looking for a job. You are leaving with three new shirts, a sticker, a fidget toy, a tote bag and a water bottle from a company you never talked to. You have somehow gotten enough corporate branding to cosplay Times Square.

 

By the time you leave, you have no idea how it went. You don’t know if any recruiters liked you, if they’ll even remember you or if your resume entered their AI pre-scanner or the recycling bin. But you survived. And you’ll only actually finish the application to maybe three of the companies you talked to today. 

 

And then you wait. 

 

And wait. 

 

And eventually, several months later, once you’ve forgotten you’ve applied, you will receive an email beginning with: “Thank you for your interest in–”

 

You know how this ends.

 

— The 12th NPC