Taking the search to Old Town, Alexandria

I arrived at the Embassy Suite hotel in Alexandria, Virginia this morning and attended the Executive Diversity Career Fair. The event was a bit disappointing. I decided to attend mainly because a management consulting firm with a large technology practice was listed in the list of companies that attended last year (the site did not list the companies that had committed to attend until almost the last minute). That company, however, was not at the event this year. I tried to spend most of the three hours there talking to as many companies as I could and the results were mostly disappointing. Many of the recruiters told me that the departments I wanted to work in were outside what the subset that they were recruiting for and referred me to the company web page. At one point I was talking to a very small consulting firm located in Arlington, Virginia (one whose name I am certain you have never heard of) and the recruiter said “I have been recruiting for more than 20 years and with your MBA, you really should look elsewhere such as (the firm that was a no show) or (another well known consulting firm).”

I did make two interesting connections. One is with a product manager who works in Raleigh for a telecom equipment company. He was at the event looking for a job. The other was with someone who graduated this May from another MBA program. We swapped stories about wanting a position that has exactly what we want and our experiences with not having a job five months after our business school graduations. He said “I am really glad I ran into you, I don’t feel so alone.”

Because I am a cheapskate and did not want to pay the eighteen dollar flat fee to park at the hotel, I found a metered spot three minutes away that cost one dollar per hour, with two hour limits. At the two hour mark, I went to feed the meter and on the way back to the hotel I saw what I immediately recognized from reading other blogs as one of the many cars that Google is using to record the streets of major cities for its Street View functionality. When I asked the driver of the California plated vehicle whether the car was equipped with a hard drive to store the information, his response was “I am sorry sir, I cannot tell you that.”