So, when do I start?
Job Fair Recruiters -- are they any good? Apparently so, our own Steve Ulfelder learned. He went undercover as an Oracle database administrator job applicant, and found that nobody was quite desperate enough to hire him
Steve Magner looks around the ballroom. He's the worst-dressed guy in the joint. Under a grudging necktie, his top shirt button is open. His blazer would get him tossed out of a used-car salesmen's convention. His beat-up cargo pants puddle on his beat-up bucks.
Magner looks at the hiring companies' banners. Where to start? AlliedSignal? Geico? Raytheon? Whatever. He slouches off to hand out resumes.
Steve Magner is actually me in disguise. Not that it was too much of a stretch to dress like a slob.
Computerworld recently got to wondering about information technology job fairs. In the Internet age, do they count for much?
Some say they add valuable face-to-face time for both prospect and hiring company. Others scoff and say they're mere cattle calls, staffed by human resources people who can't possibly evaluate candidates' IT skills. Job seekers' resumes, these critics say, simply wind up in the to-be-scanned pile. We couldn't find any IT workers who seemed especially fond of job fairs.
Still, according to a recent Computerworld survey, 10% of all IT workers are hired through recruiting events. That's way behind the leading tool -- employee referrals, at 25% -- but it's fourth on the list, ahead of search agencies (8%) and paid Internet recruiting services (also 8%). People use these fairs.
There are, of course, different kinds of IT recruiting events. You've got your campus fairs, where students are glad-handed and rushed just as they were during Greek Week. And you've got your single-company fairs, where Conglomerate.com opens its doors seeking everything from mail room staff to line-of-business executives.
But we were curious about classic, multicompany fairs put on by outfits such as Westech ExpoCorp and Kaplan Career Services. These companies are the leaders in the run-what-you-brung IT fairs that pop up at hotels all over the country.
Hence the birth of Steve Magner. Who is, not to put too fine a point on it, kind of a loser. No doubt a disappointment to his family. Can't hold a job. Can't write his way out of a paper bag. Couldn't even be bothered to spell-check his resume.
He does have one thing going for him: He's an Oracle database administrator with a couple years' experience. These days, an Oracle database administrator -- any database administrator -- is worth his weight in gold, right? Steve Magner set out to find just how much of a creep an Oracle database administrator could be and still get real interview offers.
That's why Magner is at a Kaplan career fair,


- Excel 2010 Cheat Sheet
- Register for this Computerworld Insider Cheat Sheet and gain access to hundreds of premium content articles, guides, product reviews and more.
- Practice Management: Double Billing Rate and Improve Patient Services
- Would you like to double your billing rate and achieve faster payment for services?
Download this customer success story to see how One Health... - Mission Critical Data Explosion and Customer Case Study
- Would you like to double your tier 1 storage capacity while simultaneously reducing your storage footprint?
Download this customer success story to see how... - Protecting Against Database Attacks and Insider Threats: Top 5 Scenarios
- Read this new eBook to learn the top five scenarios and essential best practices for preventing database attacks and insider threats.
- Database Activity Monitoring Is Evolving
- Read the analyst report and learn how you can leverage the core capabilities of a DAP solution for better database security.
- Establishing a Strategy for Database Security is No Longer Optional
- The options for securing increasingly valuable databases are very broad and deep, and can be confusing. This research provides an overview of three...
- Live Webcast
Data Privacy and Protection in Production Environments: New Research from Ponemon Institute - Date: Wednesday, June 13, 2012, 1:00 PM EDT / 10:00 AM PDT
In a recent study conducted by Ponemon Institute, fifty-five percent of respondents... - Live Webcast
A Geek's Guide to Presenting to Business People - Live Webcast: Wednesday, June 20th at 1:00 PM EDT
Join this live webinar with Paul Glen, author of Leading Geeks, to learn how to... - Live Webcast
Today's NAS: A Solution Beyond Old Limits - Date: Tuesday, July 17, 2012 2:00 PM EDT
Traditional NAS systems don't scale beyond fixed limits. Proliferation of NAS systems leads to management... - Distributed Database Security with Real-time Monitoring
- View this demo and learn how IBM InfoSphere Guardium database activity monitoring can help protect your sensitive data in distributed DBMS environments with...
- InfoSphere Warehouse Packs Demo
- These flash modules make warehousing more tangible and relevant to business users through detailed explanations of the InfoSphere Warehouse Packs.
- Delivery Management -- Extending Lifecycle Management
- Date: Wednesday, June 20, 2012, 1:00 PM EDT
Siloed organizations continue doing the wrong things and doing things wrong, leading to increased costs,... - Leverage automation today to reduce IT complexity
- Date: Tuesday, June 5, 2012, 2:00 PM EDT
Whether your B2B complexity is caused by multiple technologies due to M&A, business or application specific... - Redefine Expectations in the Data Center
- Need to do more with less? Watch this video to learn how HP ProLiant Gen8 servers can help your business deploy servers three...