Just gotta know which companies to talk to at the fair. For example, line for Google at my school was always long, but very quick, because they simply took the

Just gotta know which companies to talk to at the fair. For example, line for Google at my school was always long, but very quick, because they simply took the resumes, had a 1min long convo that didnt really matter (as i was even told by people working the booth there), and that’s it. For others, it actually did matter. So you just gotta figure out which ones actually care about the career fair and which ones do not. While i find the generalization of “big corps waste your time at career fairs, small companies actually do care” to be a good general heuristic for starting out, this is not universally true. Off the top of my head, i remember Palantir and Bloomberg specifically caring a lot about the career fair, with the former especially known for giving quick on-the-spot interviews at the career fair (note: i ended up working for neither of them, but i went through the full interview loops with both, and both can be absolutely attributed to my conversations with them at the fair). It is difficult to know any of that the first time you attend a career fair, but by the time your last career fair rolls out, you should already have a good idea which companies are worth talking to at the fair and which ones are not (thru your own previous experiences, friends, etc).