I attended as a recruiter, and beyond specific candidates I was interested in talking to not pitching up, it went very well. I really appreciated the effort th

I attended as a recruiter, and beyond specific candidates I was interested in talking to not pitching up, it went very well. I really appreciated the effort that particular candidates put into their "booth" (mattyb, for example) and their demo/pitch. It makes it much easier for recruiters whose day jobs aren't recruiting to start a conversation, assists memory of the candidate, and also says good things about their attitude. General advice for candidates (would be nice if this was communicated to the candidates on the web site, and sent out via email a few days before the event): CV/résumé: Have one - one page, preferably. On that, put your candidate number (and maybe a short description of your pitch/demo) - it saves the recruiters time trying to match that up with whatever notes they took before and during the event against the candidate number. Link to your github/ohloh/HN or other places the recruiters can find out about how good you are. Meet the candidates description: Make sure you're on it. Make sure you have useful information in it. When you're faced with a bunch of candidates and the description is all you can go on, you will prioritise the candidates to ensure you speak to the right people, and you might entirely rule out talking to candidates based on that description. You don't want to short-sell yourself. Demo/pitch/booth: The demo/pitch/booth is there to help initiate a conversation, so please have something prepared for people like me who don't initiate conversations with total strangers often. Try show your ingenuity and attitude by making yourself stand out so that recruiters are more likely to remember you. Some theories for the organisers: I think it might be quite cool to mix the format up a bit by scheduling time where each candidate broadcasts something about themselves to the assembled group. So, with 60-ish candidates, we could have 4 breaks during the day of 15 minutes (lunch/beverage breaks) where each candidate gets 1 minute to talk about their project (strictly supervised for time). That provides another opportunity for the candidate to attract the interest of recruiters. I spent a lot of time waiting for candidates to finish talking to other recruiters. Coming up with a mechanism to reduce this would be great. Maybe a part of the schedule later in the day where the candidate indicates that they're interested in speaking with a company that they haven't spoken to yet? Things I will try to remember next time: As a recruiter, I should have a page with job postings and contact details (and instructions to remember to mention the candidate number) to give out to each interesting candidate, and highlight the job postings that I think they would be well-suited for. I spent a lot of time waiting for candidates to finish talking to other recruiters, so I should have some way to leave the candidate with my details so they can find me when they have a free moment. My memory is really really bad. I should write down more, and make sure to make the name-candidate number connection for every person I talked to.