21.4 Elevator Pitch & Career Fair (In-Person & Virtual) Prep

Your Elevator Pitch is a 60-90 second description of your experiences & skills that relate to a specific industry, job, or company you’re speaking with. This presentation centers on preparing you for In-Person & Digital Career Fairs and helps you develop your elevator pitch. It also helps you understand that the pitch is just one portion of your conversation with a recruiter. We all need to understand how to facilitate a conversation, not just how to deliver a speech to a recruiter.

As you’re making your pitch and preparing for a Career Fair or any other networking event, it’s important to realize why these events exist in the first place. Recruiters attend these events so they can meet students face-to-face (in-person or virtually) and assess their skills & interpersonal abilities in the hopes of interviewing students for roles they have open. In an ideal world:

1. You attend the Career Fair, impress the recruiter, and the recruiter asks you to apply,
2. You apply after the fair & send the recruiter an email letting them know you applied and thanking them for their time at the fair
3. You get an interview and absolutely crush it
4. You get the job/internship

Not every Career Fair results in an interview or a job/internship offer, but regardless, all of them are fantastic relationship development opportunities. It’s important to understand that most of the recruiters attend the Career Fair every semester. As you go throughout your college career adding experiences & skills, you add to the likelihood that these events will result in interviews & jobs/internships.