Careers fairs are great opportunities for recent graduates to network with people from within many industries, meet possible employers, and ideally even land a job. While we’ve discussed how you can prepare for a careers fair, how can you find one?
In this article we’ll share some useful advice on how to find careers fairs whenever you need to, not only specific events but the places you can look to find them.
A Google Search
While seemingly obvious, knowing the right terms to Google can help you efficiently find careers fairs. Here are two of the main tricks to keep in mind (but there are many more you can try):
1. Searching a term in quotation marks (“ “) brings up search results that have that exact term.
2. When searching with quotation marks you can search for multiple terms at once by putting AND in all caps between the terms. For example, “Careers Fair” AND “La Trobe”.
3. Putting OR between two words means the search results will contain at least one. For example, you could search “Careers Fair” OR “Careers Expo” to cover both names.
Universities
Universities are a natural first place to look when trying to find careers fairs because often they’re held on campus or local universities sponsor the event.
If you are a student at a university you might be contacted when a careers fair is coming up. It might be an email because you’re studying in a certain region, discipline, or more broadly just to let students at the university know this opportunity is coming up.
You can also seek out this information yourself by finding the university’s events page and try to find upcoming careers fairs, job expos, or something of the like. The University of Sydney, for example, has a careers page that lists “Fairs, workshops and events”. Your uni might have something similar!
Event Listing Sites
The organisers of careers fairs want you to know about them so they’re likely to put events up on the same websites you’d find other events on such as concerts.
For example, going on Eventbrite and searching “careers fairs” brings up options within a certain location. This way you can then look through the results and see what’s interesting to you.
You can also search here on GradConnection! If you have an employer in mind, you can find networking events by filtering to 'Event' using the job type filter on our site! This way you can search what’s on in your nearest city with ease:
- Sydney Jobs Fairs
- Melbourne Jobs Fairs
- Brisbane Jobs Fairs
- Adelaide Jobs Fairs
- Canberra Jobs Fairs
- Perth Jobs Fairs
- Hobart Jobs Fairs
Local Council Websites
You might have only gone to your local councils website to figure out when the bins go out, but they can also put up posts about local careers fairs and expos.
You can check your councils website either by using the search on their site or by using our Google search advice to trawl the web in a keyword search.
Past Careers Fairs
Many careers fairs happen annually or even multiple times a year so if you find one that’s already passed it’s worth checking if and when the next one is.
For example the Careers & Employment Expo holds regular expos across many of Australia’s largest cities. There is also the VCE and Careers Expo which has run annually for three decades now and, for recent graduates in Melbourne, the Melbourne Career Expo is held annually.
Virtual Careers Fairs
Not all careers expos have to be in person, in fact, virtual careers fairs are becoming more and more common. While our advice is useful for both in-person and online careers fairs for the latter you can find what you’re after here on GradConnection!
Our annual Meet the Employers careers fair not only puts you in front of employers, but gives you usable application tips, hear first hand experiences from current grads, and be an opportunity to make yourself known to recruiters.
You’ve Got Options
Finding a careers fair isn’t a single technique but a mix of many. Once you find an event you like you might start to worry about the mistakes you’re bound to make. Here on GradConnection we recently discussed the common mistakes recent graduates make at these fairs and then the best ways for you to turn those mistakes into effective preparation. Good luck!