如何在网络面试中脱颖而出

    亲爱的安妮：我现在刚上大四，学校的就业指导中心发布了一则虚拟招聘会信息，该虚拟招聘会将在几周内进行，届时学生们将在网上“见到”许多潜在的用人单位。我参加过几场现场招聘会（去年我在其中一场招聘会上找到了一个很棒的暑期实习职位），但是我不熟悉虚拟招聘会。虚拟招聘会是怎么运作的呢？除了准备好要上传的简历外，我还能提前做些其他准备吗？——WW

    亲爱的W.W.：这是一个很好的问题。虚拟招聘会并不是新兴事物，但是它正在迅速普及，很大程度上是因为, 这种方式可以节约用人单位大量成本，因为用人单位不必让招聘人员飞到现场，就可以对千里之外的大量求职者进行评估。

    “和以往任何时候相比，我去年收到的虚拟招聘会邀请函要多75%，”西部公司（West Corp.）人力资源副总裁克里斯•布朗（Chris Brown）说。西部公司是视频会议公司InterCall的母公司，而后者也已经组织了数十场网上招聘会。

    布朗注意到，现在，从退伍军人团体到诸如Monster这样的求职网站，再到大学，所有组织机构都在主办虚拟招聘会，但是“千禧一代在这方面起到了带头作用。和之前任何年龄组的人相比，他们更乐于使用电话或笔记本电脑做任何事情。”

    在某些方面，虚拟招聘会和现场招聘会有相似之处。一旦你为该招聘会进行了注册并在指定时间登陆，你就可以下载参加招聘会的用人单位信息、观看视频，还可以在预定时间观看流媒体现场演示。你会发现，你不用走入通常的招聘会展位去询问问题，而是加入聊天室进行提问。

    “通常，还会涉及到Skype组件，你可以通过Skype报名参加求职面试，”布朗说。“网络环境给你提供了选择，让你通过不同的方式一次性了解许多未来的雇主。”

    正如对待现场招聘会一样，要充分利用这种大杂烩式选择，你需要提前对参加招聘会的公司进行研究，然后选择一些你特别感兴趣的公司进行“会面”。布朗还建议查看这些公司的网站。

    “通常，用人单位会在招聘会开始前提供许多信息，所以你可以提前进入聊天室并了解情况，”他说。聊天室的招聘人员可能不是“合适的人”——比如，你找的是工程类工作，但是发现和你聊天的却是营销类岗位的招聘人员——所以，“尽量确定你想从事的工作岗位，以便招聘人员最大程度帮你联系到‘合适的人’。”

    Dear Annie: I’m just starting my senior year in college, and the career center at my school has announced a virtual career fair, taking place in a couple of weeks, where students can “meet” a big group of potential employers online. I’ve been to a couple of in-person career fairs (I got a great summer internship at one of them last year), but I’m not familiar with the virtual kind. How do they work? Besides having a resume to upload, is there anything else I should do ahead of time? — Wondering in Wisconsin

    Dear W.W.: Great question. Virtual career fairs aren’t new, but they’re rapidly growing in popularity, in large part because they’re a cost-effective way for employers to size up large numbers of far-flung candidates without having to put recruiters on airplanes.

    “I’ve gotten about 75% more invitations to virtual career fairs in the past year than ever before,” says Chris Brown, vice president of human resources for West Corp., the parent of video conferencing company InterCall, which has also hosted a couple dozen online fairs.

    Everyone from veterans’ groups, to career sites like Monster, to colleges like yours is sponsoring virtual recruiting events these days, Brown notes, but “Millennials are really leading the way on this. They’re much more comfortable than previous age groups with doing everything via phone or laptop.”

    In some respects, a virtual job fair is similar to the face-to-face kind. Once you register for the event and log on at the appointed time, you’ll find you can download information about the employers who are participating, watch videos and, at preset times, stream live presentations. Instead of the usual career-fair booths, you’ll find chat rooms where you can drop in and ask questions.

    “Often there’s also a Skype component, where you can sign up for a job interview,” says Brown. “The online setting gives you options for different ways of learning about a lot of prospective employers at once.”

    To make the most of that smorgasbord of choices, do some research in advance on the companies that will be there, just as with an in-person job fair, and choose a few you’re especially interested in “meeting.” Brown suggests checking out company websites too.

    “Often, employers make a lot of information available before the fair starts, so you can go in ahead of time and look around,” he says. The person who’s available in the chat room during the event may not be the right one—you may be looking for an engineering job and find yourself chatting with a marketing recruiter, for example—so “the more specific you can be about what you’re looking for, the better that recruiter will be able to connect you to the right person at the company.”