With so many comments on the state of the job market, I'm surprised to not see even one mention of career fairs. It's quite common for universities to host thes

With so many comments on the state of the job market, I'm surprised to not see even one mention of career fairs. It's quite common for universities to host these and while they have their own set of disadvantages, it seems they could also provide a lot of value in the current market. The physical presence would ensure that it's a real person and it makes cheating significantly harder. Deciding a time and place would allow lots of companies and applicants to meet within a few day period so it would be pretty efficient. A larger sized fair might last for a week or two and most companies would stay the entire time while applicants would just buy a one or two day pass. They could potentially even do in person interviews within the same period which would further save on hiring costs. Have a few of these in each region per year, it seems like it would be doable, it's just a matter of getting everyone on board (of course, easier said than done). You could maybe even use the fair as a screening to give applicants a boost in future online applications - if they seem like a good applicant after talking in person but perhaps not the exact fit needed for current open positions, just flag their career account internally as a verified high quality applicant. Short of career fairs, verifying identity and employment history might be valuable and it seems like LinkedIn or some competitor should be able to do this. If a company can verify itself through a reliable process and then publicly mark accounts of employees who have been employed there for whatever duration, that seems like a low hanging fruit. In fact it sounds so obvious that maybe there's a reason they haven't done this yet? Any reason someone could think of for why this isn't already happening?