It's College Fair season again, or maybe it's always the season? Anyway, I noticed something noteworthy at one and wanted to make note of it.
This one was at a local auditorium so that it could hold over 200 schools, open to all high school students, and a large crowd had gathered. My daughter cut me loose to prowl the tables on her own, so I roamed the hall and circled a few times. Of course there's a typical setup to these events: rows of tables with schools end to end, with 1-2 reps behind each table, answering questions from students and parents.
I've described my issues with this setup before, and was seeing more of the same dynamic: some students are confident enough to march from table to table, waiting to make eye contact with the rep, sometimes with the parents in tow. Students tend to pile up at these tables and the dynamic resembles a Chipotle – waiting in a queue for your turn to connect with a rep and ask questions. Anywhere from 0 to 4 students piling up waiting. And waiting. Looking around, it was easy to see what schools were popular: the schools with the biggest knot of students waiting. Schools without a knot looked...unpopular. No way to spin it.
What drew the crowd was that this school had hacked the setup. Instead of a lone rep behind a banner-draped table with brochures and a pile of lanyards, this school had a rep behind the table, and then another rep in front of the table, walking out into the crowd, and answering questions.
But then I saw one knot – not 4-5 students, but 10-15 and parents also. Was this a very popular school? What accounted for the crowd? Time to investigate.
It turns out that this school was moderately popular (as far as I could tell) but that's not what drew the crowd. What drew the crowd was that this school had hacked the setup. Instead of a lone rep behind a banner-draped table with brochures and a pile of lanyards, this school had a rep behind the table, and then another rep in front of the table, walking out into the crowd, and answering questions. This rep was dynamic, engaging, and had mastered the art of carrying on multiple conversations at once. She made eye contact with everyone and was able to move between conversations with ease, and even merge conversations – so that one student who was curious about the biology major had joined another conversation about intramural sports.
Compared to the other tables this almost seemed unfair. Like the kind of trick that would cause the other schools to complain about rules being broken or some such. I don't know if this is was legal. But it sure seemed to work.
I know most schools can't afford to send 2 reps to a fair, but then I thought: why couldn't a single rep do this? Just step out in front of the table. Reach back to grab a brochure or viewbook when needed, but just wade out into the stream and draw the crowd to you.
