Career Fairs - Possible Shady Tactics?

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I've been to a couple career fairs for companies that were looking to hire a bunch of people in different departments. I of course sought out the accounting positions. Just coming out of college and having little to no experience, there was question as to whether or not I'd be fit for the accounting jobs they were advertising even though they were simple and clerical. At these career fairs, they typically have someone from whatever department you'd like to work for interview you on the spot. With these career fairs however, I'm told "Our finance team had to attend a meeting today and won't be available. We'll have them contact you asap." Famous last words. It never happens, and worse yet is I can never get a hold of anyone when I try to follow up. I'm kind of wondering if this is nothing more than a gimmick to immediately weed people out who don't meet the qualifications of the jobs. Has anyone else encountered a similar experience?

My 2 cents.

If someone from that department is not there to do an interview, then whoever is there is likely too disinterested to bother to see that the right person gets your stuff. As they probably do fairs all over the place, losing you as a prospect isn't an issue in this economy.

Usually, you need to obtain contact information for both who you need to talk to as well as who you did talk to and follow up to ensure your material is seen and reviewed. Otherwise it might just wind up in the dust bin.

Let me give you another example. A year ago, there was a new casino cruise line that came to port and was looking to hire a bunch of people including accountants. They held a two day career fair where the line went all the way to Timbuktu. It took me three hours just to get in the door. When I finally did, I waited behind a line labeled "Accountants & Auditors". The lady at the desk was interviewing people for at least 15 minutes each. When she got to me, she said "Well your resume looks good, but unfortunately our finance manager isn't here." I only spoke to her for a brief period of time. The HR manager approached me and apologized again that the person I was supposed to speak to wasn't there. Of course they didn't have that person's information. I just wonder why, if I was going for the same type of job as the people in front of me, they received much longer interviews than I did. Again, I think it was a gimmick and they were using years of experience as a benchmark.