Connect with the innovators: The Harvard Startup Career Fair

I can attest, from firsthand knowledge, that the Harvard Startup Career Fair is not just another job fair. The event, being held this Friday at the i-lab, is, unfortunately for the Greater Boston innovation ecosystem, for Harvard students only. The event features some of the most buzzed about companies in the country, in industries ranging from information technology to e-commerce to enterprise software to mobile app development. However, a number of companies seeking to hire new employees are also some of the high-caliber ventures being built by students and alumni that you may not have even heard of yet. While the obvious reason for such an event is being able to set students up with a great job, there is another — possibly more important — reason to attend the career fair if you can. The potential for building connections may be, in the long term, of more value than finding a new employer. Before heading out on what, thus far, has been the greatest adventure of my life — working at a startup, writing for VentureFizz and the Boston Globe, achieving a career ‘dream job,’ advising early-stage companies, and helping promote one of the great educational venture collaboratives in the country — I was a wayward middle school English teacher with a yearning for something greater. After I decided that I wanted to make a career pivot into the technology space in some capacity,I didn’t have a clue which company I could work for, never mind who would be willing to take a chance on a former teacher. I knew very little about local startups and tech ventures; I knew even less about which industries and companies had opportunities for jobs in the Boston-area. As a part-time Harvard Extension School graduate student I had heard of the newly launched Harvard Innovation Lab. When the i-lab announced its first “career fair,” I was excited that my Extension School bonafides allowed me access to the Harvard-student-only event. With a little creative scheduling, I snuck out of school and was amazed by what I discovered. Although there were probably only 40 companies at the event, it seemed like hundreds. Each company seemed so passionate about planning to “disrupt” whatever industry they were a part of. Each was giving away brightly colored brand t-shirts, stickers, or some other form of “swag.” Each had perfectly developed its pitch to woo potential employees. The early-stage startups that were in attendance that day have taken quite different paths since. Some have failed or been acquired. A few have gone on to raise large sums of money from investors (tens of millions in one or two cases). One or two has gone public or achieved “unicorn” status by receiving valuations over $1 billion. Although I didn’t end up working for any of the companies at the event that day, I met some people for the first time whom I have since gone on to write about for various media outlets, have become trusted advisors and friends, and have reached out to me once or twice for my own take on a problem they may be experiencing while running their business. All it took was a cold introduction and the handing over of a business card among the chaos of the i-lab’s job fair. What struck me most about the i-lab’s career fair — something that has stayed with me since — was the level playing field created by the event. You had Google vying for the same crop of employees as Bobo Analytics (which eventually become fitness tracking upstart Whoop). The booth for Facebook’s representatives was sandwiched between one at which Brent Grinna (HBS ‘10) was showing previews of his fledgling app Evertrue, which is one of Boston’s hottest edtech startups, and the founders of CampusLive, which morphed into Connolly Brothers acquisition Dailybreak. The point being that if you are looking to break into the technology and innovation world, and you don’t really know where to start (and even if you do, you can do some company reconnaissance), the i-lab career fair will introduce you to everyone from companies that may be looking for their third employee to those that have garnered a fair amount of national buzz — like mattress company Casper, or Oscar Health, which just raised funding that could value it at close to $3 billion — to companies that may already have the wheels in motion to go public. This year, more than 150 companies will be attending the career fair in order to scoop up the best talent coming out of all of Harvard’s schools. Beyond companies that already have some brand recognition are quite a few that you probably have never heard of — some of these are based at the Harvard Launch Lab or are part of the i-lab’s Venture Incubation Program. While the Startup Career Fair is a great chance to become more comfortable with the existing landscape for job opportunities in startups and beyond, more than anything, it is a unparalleled opportunity to get connected with some very creative individuals and innovative companies. The 2016 Startup Career Fair is being held on Friday, February 2 from 1:00 to 5:00 at the Harvard Innovation Labs at Batten Hall.