I skipped the hot dog and handed out CVs at Fieldays
Four hours of face-to-face networking at Mystery Creek — here's what happened
Yesterday I did something a little outside the usual . I drove out to Fieldays at Mystery Creek in Hamilton and spent the morning doing something that felt genuinely old-school: walking up to people, saying hi, and handing out my CV in person.
I was there from 9am to 1pm. Four hours, face to face, no hiding behind a LinkedIn message or an email that gets buried in a recruitment inbox.
"I didn't even get a hot dog. That's how focused I was."
I think I surprised a few people. Not in a bad way — just that showing up in person at a trade show with printed CVs isn't really what people expect anymore. But the conversations I had were real. I met some genuinely impressive people doing great things in the industry, had proper chats, and left feeling like I'd actually connected with humans rather than algorithms.
I hit a few stands that made sense for my background — IT, systems, field work, the kind of hands-on technical roles I've been building toward. Whether anything comes of it, I honestly don't know. But I'd rather have made the effort and found out than sat at home applying into the void.
We'll see what comes from this. If nothing else, I got a good few hours out of the house, some decent conversations, and the knowledge that I showed up. That counts for something.