Job fairs are a wonderful place to look when you are trying to find a new job, but only if you avoid making some easy mistakes. There will many people at any job fair you attend and they will all be looking to one-up you, so you need to be sure that you do everything in your power to stand out from the crowd, but in a positive way. Negative attention, is not the attention you should be trying to get a job fair.

Here are some things that you should never do when attending a job fair:

• Be Unprepared: Don’t go to a job fair without being prepared. Bring lots of resumes to a job fair. Many people will bring only three or so and what typically happens is they run out in a hurry. It is better to be prepared and bring 20 than it is to be unprepared and run out.
• Dress Sloppy: It happens all the time, people wearing shorts and flip-flops to a job fair. Do you think that impresses a potential employer? When you attend a job fair you should dress to impress.
• Chew Gum: If you are chewing on a stick of gum when attending a job fair hopefully you are not planning on talking to anyone. Job fairs are a great place to not only find out about a number of companies that are hiring, but also to speak with people from that company. Nobody wants to talk to someone who is smacking their jowls together due to a stick of gum.

While job fairs are not job interviews, if treated properly they can become one. You should always treat job fairs the same way you would treat a job interview and if you do, your success at them will be great.