As we get close to wrapping out our first major round of career fairs this Fall, I wanted to highlight some ways that you can extend the value of the conversations you started either in-person in Houston Hall or Virtually in Handshake. Career Fairs can be a blur and following up after a fair can be an easy way to keep the conversation flowing or just to show your appreciation to the people you’ve met along the way.
For virtual fairs, Handshake makes it easy. You can go back into the fair (either directly here or by searching by Date in Handshake) and go to your schedule of sessions. From there, you can message anyone directly in the system.

If you’re not sure what to say, Handshake gives some great suggestions:
- Follow up on something you found interesting or helpful from the event.
- Show your enthusiasm for a role, this company, or the industry.
- Ask questions about the company.
If you attended one of our in-person fairs, it’s helpful if you were able to grab a business card or remember the name of who you spoke to. If you didn’t, the company’s Handshake profile will often include employees who were recently active in the system that might jog your memory. Either way, we have an amazing contact data base that can help find an email address for that person–CareerShift.

I think of CareerShift as one of our office’s hidden gems for networking that makes it easy to identify people to connect with and often includes their contact info. Once you create an account using your Penn email address, you can either search by name, company, job title, or more. Even if you didn’t get a chance to attend one of the fairs, you could use this to look for a “Campus Recruiter” at one of your top companies of interest.
If you’re interested in learning more about strategies for keeping the conversation alive or networking in general, our Learn How To… Make Connections and Network page has tons of resources.