5:30pm EDT Update
The HealthIT Job Fair at Georgia State University today was interesting. The intent was to have all candidates prescreened prior to attending. I don't think that was a good call at all. There weren't enough candidates there. It was a good turnout, but in my mind there should've been more job seekers there. The booths that were the busiest included those for MedAssets, Greenway Technologies, and McKesson. All three booths had multiple reps there to meet candidates.
The majority of the folks in attendance seemed to be there trying to figure out how best to repackage themselves to move from an IT background to a Healthcare IT career. There was a lot of advice offered on how to do this on the panel.
Why weren't there any college students at this? The event was at GSU, yet there was not a single student there that I met. In fairness there could have been a handful since I didn't meet everyone, but all things considered I think a job fair at a university ought to pull in college students, especially in a town like Atlanta with so many good schools near downtown Atlanta.
I'm still glad I attended and I enjoyed the comments on the panel I sat on from Han Reichgelt from Southern Polytechnic and State Uniersity, Marlie Johnson from Greenway, and Jennifer Dennard from Billians. A good group.
9am EDT
I'm on a panel at 11am in today's HealthIT Job Fair at Georgia State University, sponsored by the Technology Association of Georgia (TAG).
The link to the overview is .
I will be interested to see the questions or response from the audience, which I assume will be recent or pending college graduates but it may be an even healthier mix of people hoping to enter healthcare IT. I'm betting up front we talk about some basics of job searching that are never heeded like they should be:
- The power of the written word and especially the thank you note
- Creative ways to speak to someone who really could hire you
- How to identify where you truly need to expand your skills, and how to do just that
I will post my comments on the event later today.