I've told about 10-20 FO friends of mine and I send them all the link. Each one comes back with, "why no mainline employers there."
Any advice what to tell them? I try saying it's not about the employers there, but the attendees there and the chance to talk pilots that are already at mainline.
I think it the "horse, water, why don't he drink" concept.
A traditional career fair, there are going to be a kajillion people standing in line like lego people that get to shake a hand, show their resume and it's not going to go anywhere unless you're an exceptional candidate and you're already on the radar.
This is networking. You're making internal contacts with people who are where you want to be and want to help get you there.
Most of the larger "mainline" companies will do OBAP and WIA, dust the powder off their hands and disappear for the rest of the year and leave the rest to the internal recommendation process. My employer is quite honest about doing a couple of the big ones because otherwise it's not beneficial to meeting their hiring goals for the most part.
FedEx isn't going to come to a career fair because they don't need to. The people that want to work for them, they know, are the type of people that know a handful of people on the inside and they're letting their more 'organic' process work.
Jetblue doesn't do job fairs, but there are people in attendance that are going to help qualified candidates make it happen. Hell, I know half the guys in the hiring process and if a person walked up to me and said, "I really want to work for Jetblue" guess what, they're probably going to get in direct contact with the people that can make that happen because they're personal friends of mine.
So we're not a career fair, we're a networking event with some recruiters from very hungry carriers that understand how we do things.
You need internal reccs and someone on the inside to help. This is how to do it.
You can't sit on your ass, stand in line and expect magic to happen in 2014. Those days are behind us. You're not a career fair away from success, you're about three or four strong networking contacts away from your goals. That's a very important distinction in this era.