How to Plan a Fair With Many Employer Exhibits
A Career Information Fair is a great way to introduce middle or high school students to the world of work. Bringing employers to exhibit at your school gives students a chance to meet new people, learn about careers they may never have considered before, and begin thinking about a career path.
Students get the most out of a Career Fair if you organize the exhibits to help students understand how careers and employers relate to each other. It is also important to use the Fair to teach students about Career and Technical Education and guide them to enroll in courses that will help them meet their career goals.
To make your Career Fair a success, it's important to develop a timeline to help keep yourself on track. It usually takes about three months to adequately prepare a successful event. Feel free to contact us for support materials and assistance.
Our Career Fair Guidelines and supplementary resources give you simple steps to improve your Fair and encourage student learning and CTE enrollment. In addition to documents that we prepared, we also attached links to resources shared with us by other schools, especially those in the Charlottesville-Area. Included on our website are examples of schools around Virginia that have held successful Career Fairs. Take a moment to look through some of them as they are sure to inspire your creative side, or at least give you more concrete tips on how to plan. The support documents included may be useful to you as well. Harrisonburg High School held a great Fair last spring, using our guidelines as as a starting point and adding many innovations of their own. Read about their Fair using the link on the left.
Organize Exhibits. Connect Your Fair to CTE Courses.
1. Make a Guidance Station the first stop.
Station a guidance counselor by the entrance to explain the fair and direct students to exhibits that interest them. Use this list of Virginia's CTE courses as the starting point for creating a list of the CTE courses available to your students. Use it at the Guidance Station to show students which courses will meet their career goals.
2. Arrange exhibits in career clusters.
Grouping Exhibitors together by career cluster helps students understand how careers are related to each other. This document suggests how exhibitors can be arranged this way (though, of course, the career cluster concept applies primarily to occupations not to employers).
3. Help exhibitors to advise students about careers.
Give exhibitors our Advice for Exhibitors to help them connect with students. Edit the document so that it has more specific information about your fair. Give exhibitors the list of your CTE courses and encourage them to direct students toward courses appropriate for careers in their field.
4. Encourage exhibitors to bring hands-on activities.
These activities can be very simple — like trying on a firefighter's helmet or listening with a stethoscope. Check out this slide show from Massanutten Technical Center's 2008 Community Career Fair to see great examples of exhibitors reaching students with first class hands-on activities.
5. Link the Fair to class registration.
Explain to the students (before, during, and after the fair) that they can register for CTE courses to prepare for the careers they see at the exhibit. Show them how to do this.
6. Encourage nontraditional enrollment.
Pay special attention to students who visit exhibits that are nontraditional for their gender and make them feel welcome.
Market Your Fair to Students and Parents
Anouncement. Promote your Fair to students with an announcement like this one in Word used for the Charlottesville-Area Expo.
Flyer for Parents. Keep parents in the know with a flyer like this one in Word from the Charlottesville-Area Expo.
Career Fair Brochure. Use this Word document from the Charlottesville-Area Career Expo as the starting point for a brochure to tell students and parents about your Career Fair.
Prepare Students for the Fair with Lesson Plans and Activities
Lesson Plan with Pre- and Post-Fair Activities. Use this KWL-based lesson plan in Word as the starting point for developing your own lesson plans including pre-Fair, post-Fair, and in-Fair activities.
Fair Preparation Activity. Use this activity from the Charlottesville-Area Expo to help students visualize a future career.
Lesson Plan focused on Expo Goals. Use this lesson plan in Word from the Charlottesville-Area Expo as the starting point for your own lesson plan. Combine it with their Pretest and Postest.
Careers Are Everywhere. This career workbook from the Texas Labor Market and Career Information website has great activities. It's aimed at elementary students, but is good for middle-schoolers as well.
Career Clusters Interest Survey. This simple interest inventory was prepared by CareerClusters.org. Use it to help students discover which of Virginia's 16 career clusters will interest them most.
Career Cluster Information Handout. A handout to help students learn about Virginia’s career clusters, including lists of occupations in each career cluster. Edit this Word document to include more of the careers represented by your employers.
Nontraditional Activity. Use this activity to encourage students to "think outside the career box" and investigate careers and courses they might never have considered before.
