Distribution of chocolates, juice in tetra packs, and CDs containing company details; displaying of power point presentations and even TV screenings… companies were employing different strategies for wooing candidates to work with them. This was the scenario at The Smart Techie job fair held in Bangalore at the NIMHANS convention center on 22 September 2007. Attended by more than 3000 professionals with experience ranging from 2-15+ years in the IT industry, the fair was a platform for companies, HR recruiters, and professionals to come together and interact with each other and explore opportunities.

Participating companies included Aditi Technologies, Applied Materials, Bally Technologies, GlobalLogic, GXS, Huawei Technologies, Intaact, Intec, Metricstream, New Era India Consultancy, Real Soft, SonicWall, Stratify Software, Tavant Technologies, Unisys, and Vendio. Some of them conducted tests for the candidates at the venue. There were also interviews which were taken by the senior management of various companies. “We got some really potential candidate profiles from the job fair,” commented Roshni Das, Recruitment Manager of RealSoft. “We had planned to distribute tetra pack juice for the candidates coming to our stall. But to our surprise could not open more than one carton due to the heavy rush at the stall,” says Purnima S.G., Manager Finance and Administration of Stratify Software.

Candidates were also thrilled at the variety of opportunities spread out for them in the job fair. “I came looking for opportunities in Quality Assurance and I had ample choices to explore,” says Shravan Shah (name changed to protect identity) who has expertise in Quality Assurance. Working with one of the biggest IT companies, Praveen Shrivastava (name changed to protect identity) wanted to use his skills in the .Net area in a smaller organization to get more visibility. “I came to explore growth opportunities with smaller companies,” he explains. This is the 12th job fair conducted by The Smart Techie magazine.