Abbey Saddler

Talent Executive

Zack Slovina

James Sullinger

Senior Account Executive

Katherine Ortiz

Jen Antill

Senior Talent Executive

Maria LaTour

Marketing Manager

Susie Isphording

Strategic Talent Executive

Ryan Van Echo

Chief Operating Officer

Ryan Smith

Managing Director

Olivia Skaates

Strategic Account Executive, Emerging Markets

Morgan Toney

Account Coordinator

Lauren McCuen

People Operations Coordinator

Kyle Benton

Managing Director, South

Angela Wayner

Strategic Account Executive

Ariel Smith

Deborah Andrews

Director of People Operations

Deborah Day

Tony Haislar

Alan Kutasy

CEO + Founder

Rob Moyer

President + Co-Founder

Whether you're in school and seeking your first job in the real world or looking to embark on a new career path, attending a career or job fair is a smart step for marketing yourself to potential employers. On top of the unavoidable anxiety that comes with job seeking, how can you stand out among other attendees and make a memorable first impression with potential employers? Follow these 5 tips to make the most of your next career fair.

Before going into a career fair, it’s incredibly beneficial to know what companies you plan to connect with to optimize your time (after all, you’re likely attending to get face time with company reps). Once you determine which companies you’d like to network with, review their websites to understand what they do, their core values, community involvement, and any social media channels to understand their culture. Ultimately, can you see yourself working with this company? 

After researching the companies, you can craft a more tailored and personal introduction. This is the perfect opportunity to: 

Hi, I’m John Smith, and I’m currently interning as a social media marketing intern at ABC Marketing here in Columbus. I noticed that your team recently completed a massive project with a healthcare client and increased organic traffic by 20% YoY by implementing the right mix of media, awareness building, and acquisition. One of my passions is connecting data to creative content and testing out messaging based on desired target audiences to drive conversions. I’d love to hear more about your team’s project and what you do at ABC!

Approaching the company booths with intention and understanding who they are and what they do will help set you apart from other attendees – it’s a win-win! 

While it may feel “out of date,” bringing hard copies of your resume to a career fair shows your interest, drive, and professionalism. Make sure your resume is up to date 

Don’t have a printer at home? No sweat. Your local library is an excellent resource for more than just books, and they can help you print copies for less than $0.50 per copy. We recommend researching how many company booths you’d like to visit (see #1 above), then double that number for how many copies to bring with you.  

This is simply an answer you give to the most asked “So… tell me about yourself?” question. This is your chance to show off who you are and your accomplishments in 30-seconds or less. Our Talent Executive, 

 or, in this case, as an intro to a potential employer. 

Like after a job interview, follow up with the individuals at the company booths you networked with and are interested in pursuing a career. While at the career fair, jot down notes such as big takeaways from your time with the organizations. This will help keep you organized once you leave the career fair. 

We recommend adding the individuals you networked with on 

 and sending them a quick note about your time with them. This will help you stand out among all the attendees they talked with and leave a great impression! If you discussed a specific role with the company, you can use this as an opportunity to ask about next steps. 

Along with networking with the companies, take advantage of other benefits of attending a career fair. For example, the organizers may offer attendees professional headshots or a resume review station. 

Who doesn’t want a free professional headshot to update their LinkedIn or Handshake profiles when job seeking? 

This information will be included on the career fair’s webpage if it’s being offered. 

These ad-hoc opportunities can help build your professionalism and help you understand how you can best stand out among the crowd! 

 with you to the career fair! This is what shines through when you meet people (aka potential employers), and the above will help build that key confidence. These tips will undoubtedly set you up for personal and professional success when preparing to attend a career fair – you got this! 

So, you’re getting ready to attend a career fair 

When it comes to getting a job, my professional experience provides a unique perspective. I’ve been a job seeker, actively applying and interviewing for positions. Once employed, I was a technical recruiter, working on behalf of our clients to find the best technical talent. I regularly screened candidates while actively persuading them to interview for positions. In my current job, one of my responsibilities is to recruit talent executives to join Agility Partners. 

That’s right. I’m a recruiter of recruiters. 

Because in my experience, I often get a lot of questions about resumes, interviewing, salary, and how to “seal the deal.” Honestly, I could write articles on each of these things, but the one piece of advice that I cannot stress is enough is this: 

For some, this advice might seem obvious. For others, the importance of this is brand new information. I’m talking to the latter group of people. In a world where everything is virtual and, most communication is through text or email, getting a little hand-written note can make you stand out against the competition. It’s a great way to recap the conversation that you’ve had, show gratitude for their time, and reiterate your interest in the job. 

Writing Thank You notes for your interviews is an investment of time, so here are a few ways you can make this process easier: 

We are in a tight market, and as I write this, our country’s unemployment rate is skyrocketing due to Covid-19. Because of this, many people find themselves interviewing alongside dozens of people for the same role. Don’t give yourself any reason to be overlooked. Just send the Thank You note! 

Send the thank you note

“Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together” -Vincent van Gogh

Want to create success? Find a way to enable your entire company to constantly create small wins each day. But how do you do this? I’ve recently been asking myself that question as we near the 5th anniversary of 

and building out our intelligent automation business 

If you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there.” – Lewis Carroll

You have to know where you want to go and then build a plan to get there. For us, this started with reading 

; I cannot recommend this book enough to any business owner or team that wants to create lasting value. Traction outlines an operating system for your business, and through the chapters, you develop a ten-year vision, core values, focus, differentiators, and a 3-year roadmap to move you along your journey.

This vision roadmap has been indispensable to us as we’ve grown. We update it once a year and then work to build our annual plan to move us 10% down the path towards our ultimate goal each year.

“A vision, without a plan, is just a hallucination” – Will Rodgers

The second step in the V/TO, or vision/traction organizer, is the 1-year plan. We create one of these annually towards the end of the year, outlining core numbers (revenue, GP, NI), headcount, and 5-7 major goals that must be accomplished. We also create our annual budget, which is a huge piece of the puzzle, as you must know how much money you have to invest, and where you’re going to make those investments.

From this one-year plan, we then break it down each quarter into rocks (goals) that are distributed amongst the leadership team. Each of our leaders adds their department goals that get us ¼ of the way to our annual goal, and then each team member is given rocks from those.

This ensures every single person in the company has quarterly goals aligned with our companies’, from the quarterly targets up to the 10-year vision.

“You win with people!” – Woody Hayes

Having a plan is great, but if you don’t have anyone to help you execute it, you’ll get nowhere. It took us a while to get good at this, but over time and under the guidance of 

, we’ve developed a great process/strategy for hiring new people and turning them loose in our organization. It’s certainly not easy, but here are a few steps that will help:

By doing this, you hire great people that will work well within your culture, and you show them exactly where they fit and what they’re expected to do. The last piece is to build a top-notch onboarding program that everyone goes through and develops 30, 60, and 90-day checkpoints with expected outcomes at each step of the way.

All models are wrong, but some are useful” – George E.P. Box

Once you’ve got everyone working well, how do you know if things are going according to plan? You need to develop systems to frequently report back on progress. For us, we use weekly leadership and department meetings where each team reports on their scorecard (a list of key metrics with targets, so it’s immediately visible if we’re above or below target), reports on goals, and solves key issues.

We’ve noticed that requiring each team member to give a brief update on all their rocks each week to the entire team helps hold everyone accountable and keeps everything on track.

I would also highly recommend that you hold a monthly budget vs. actuals meetings. This ensures budgets are maintained and can alert you of areas to focus on.

Lastly, it’s crucial that you also develop easy feedback loops for customers. This must be more than just Google reviews; it should be a series of calls, emails, and surveys that go out on a cadence that allows you to continuously track sentiment and can serve as an early warning sign of bigger issues to come.

“When you come to a fork in the road, take it!” – Yogi Berra

If you do all the above, you’ll have a strong organization, but it will be incredibly brittle. 

What happens when things don’t go according to plan? Do you lose a client? Does the economy turn? An investment doesn’t pay off

? Or things just plain aren’t working – you’re getting things done, but it isn’t moving the needle.

. This is more of an art than a science because you don’t want to be the type of company that always has a different flavor of the month and is constantly trying something new. You need to stick to your quarterly plan and the team should hold each other accountable for what was supposed to get done, but sometimes the world throws you a curveball.

If something does need to be swapped out, that’s fine. When these situations arise, we discuss them in our weekly leadership meetings, ensure everyone is on the same page with the new direction we’re taking, decide what will now 

 happen instead of the new initiative, and lastly (and most importantly), be sure to communicate this to the entire team.

To facilitate this, we have a bi-weekly all-staff meeting which allows us to update the entire company on progress towards our plan, highlight big news and showcase great work that people have done, and message anything like the above to everyone.

“If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time.” – Steve Jobs

At AP, our final core value is to have fun! It will be a lot of work along the way, but if you enjoy the ride and follow the above steps, the possibilities are limitless.

How to optimize your organization for growth and impact

“The competition to hire the best will increase in the years ahead. Companies that give extra flexibility to their employees will have the edge in this area.” Bill Gates (Aug 2019) 

Managing Zoom calls with kids screaming and dogs barking in the background is the new normal. Blonde jokes offend a significantly smaller population than they used to. “Netflixing” has become an official verb and Peloton stocks are soaring. These are all things we can reflect on and laugh about. That is if you are still employed. For those that have been affected, it becomes a much different story and there are some important questions to ask: 

Throughout my IT career, I have seen various ebbs and flows in the talent pool. These have always been gradual and somewhat predictable. Up until March of this year, we were on the upward swing. It was a candidate’s market. With the economy firing on all cylinders, job seekers could be picky, name their price, and turn offers down if something better came along (I observed this happen on several occasions). There was a level of arrogance that I had not seen. Instead of being grateful that a recruiter noticed their profile, they were annoyed that someone would even bother them. If you are in that boat, it may time to start doing some damage control. These recruiters may now become your lifeline. Believe me, I was a hiring manager when the market was like today. There were more candidates than there were positions. I had resumes for days but unless I had a story, it seemed to become another piece of paper sitting on my desk for review. 

The competition is going to become fierce. Those nice to haves like “polyskilled” and “T-Shaped” are going to become requirements. Here are a few suggestions that could be the difference between the door being opened or potentially slammed in your face. 

Simply put, everyone has been impacted, whether that is directly or indirectly by knowing someone who has. 

 was created to allow you to leverage your network, and increase your income. You can browse our job board, refer yourself or anyone in your network. If that person is placed, we pay a healthy referral fee (usually $1000 to $3000). 

Whether you are a job seeker, hiring manager, or someone that just wants to see what is out there, we would love an 

When the war on talent shifts to the war on jobs

I think it goes without saying that most of us wish we could push up 2021 a few months and put 2020 behind us. I know I am not alone when I say that 2020 has been a doozy. What are you doing to battle through this adversity? Will you come out on top or are you going to tap out? Everyone faces adversity but how is it that some are able to flourish and others just can’t shake it? In my personal journey, I have contemplated this a great deal recently. As the hits seem to keep coming, how can I continue to grow in these tough times? After reading about and studying some of the misfortunes of many successful people, I would like to propose a few trends that I have observed. 

People always say, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” I say, put down the lemons, grab a beer and push forward. No matter how bad you think your circumstances are, I guarantee you that someone is going through worse. Don’t let yourself get overwhelmed with negative emotions and thoughts. Look for opportunities and stop swimming in your despair.

Do you crumble or rise in the face of adversity?

Picture this, it’s 2015 and I’m actively swiping on Bumble. I swipe right on a guy I find visually appealing and we strike up a conversation. This is steady for about a week or so before we agree to meet for happy hour. The date is set and the location is secured, but right as the day draws near, I start to get cold feet. While this guy seemed exciting at first, other matches have been made and I’m curious to explore other opportunities. Since we haven’t technically met and I have no real commitment, I decide to pull a classic No Call, No Show. Ghosting, as the kids say. 

Fast forward to 2019, I’m actively recruiting top tech talent in Columbus. I meet a candidate for coffee, and we discuss a position my company is supporting where his background would be a great fit. Over the course of 2 months, I get him interviews and finally an offer; all the while having regular, open, and honest communication with each other. However, as the due date for the offer letter draws near, he starts to get cold feet. While this seemed exciting at first, other companies have seemingly reached out and he’s curious to explore. He pulls a classic No Call, No Show. In fact, my number was blocked on the day that we were scheduled to talk through the details of the offer. I have officially been Ghosted.  

Ghosting, coined in 2016, is when a person cuts off all communication with their friends, a person they’re dating, or acquaintance with zero warning or notice beforehand. While this practice started in the world of online dating, it has made its way into the recruiting sector as well. With a less than 1% unemployment rate in the Columbus IT market, it’s getting easier and easier for candidates to walk away from one offer to accept another, all while Ghosting recruiters and Hiring Managers with the same recklessness as I pulled in my Bumble days. 

It’s not just active job seekers. Recruiters often get the bad rap of ghosting candidates, too. So, why do we do it? Because giving difficult feedback is, well, difficult! During the entire life cycle of interviewing, candidates feel the need to praise the employer and recruiters feel the need to praise the candidate, all in the effort to get an offer. When it comes time to give bad news, we often forget how to do it tactfully and it can feel easier to just walk away. 

If you find yourself tempted to ghost, remember these 3 things: 

Let’s all resolve to leave Ghosting in the past in 2020.

Ghost of candidates past

What do COVID, Instagram, and Netflix have in common? Besides the fact that we now consume more Instagram and Netflix due to COVID, these are all examples of pivoting. Being forced to pivot can feel uncomfortable but could be the very thing to benefit you in the long run. 

Instagram’s initial prototypes were quite robust and included check-in features, photo posting, point-earnings, etc. The suggestion and idea to simplify the app are what have helped it become one of the most popular social media platforms today.  

The idea of ‘Pivot and Adjust’ could be the very thing to catapult your career, life, happiness to a place you never knew was possible. 

At the beginning of the year, I’m sure we all had plans of making the best of 2020. Aside from it being a new decade, I was getting ready to bring a baby into the world. Amidst all the uncertainty and change that COVID brought, life had to continue. The one constant I found comfort in was the simple idea to ‘pivot and adjust’. It is a friendly reminder to be flexible, go with the flow, and remember that regardless of the plans you have, there may always be something to thwart those plans. 

I never thought I’d be working remotely with a baby, but the silver lining is that I get to plan my day accordingly to allow more time for work while also balancing time with my new addition. 

What other ways are you seeing businesses pivot and adjust? 

How have you personally had to pivot and adjust? 

Send the thank you note

How to optimize your organization for growth and impact

When the war on talent shifts to the war on jobs

Do you crumble or rise in the face of adversity?

Ghost of candidates past

Pivot and adjust