5 Tips To Host A Virtual Job Fair

Virtual Job Fairs: The #1 Way to Find Top Talent for Your Company

Career fairs have come a long way. Many people envision a crowded events space with rows upon rows of tables and long lines of candidates waiting to interact with recruiters. 

Job fairs are held to recruit fresh, new talent. To extend the scope of their search, universities, government agencies, and even individual companies are hosting virtual career fairs to find the best candidates for their brand. 

A virtual job fair connects employers and job seekers through an online platform. Virtual career fairs have many of the same positives as live career fairs.

On top of being cost-effective and time-saving, virtual job fairs offer a way to easily track ROI, improve recruitment marketing, and offer access to highly qualified prospects from across the country. 

Just because online career fairs take place online doesn’t mean they have to be impersonal. One of the most popular features of an online job fair humanizes virtual events by facilitating one-on-one interactions between recruiters and candidates. 

Let’s look at how a virtual career fair works and five tips you can use to host a successful virtual hiring event. 

Why Should You Choose A Virtual Career Fair? 

Virtual career fairs play a pivotal role in finding fantastic staff members for companies without compromising quality, cost, or hiring targets. 

Virtual job fairs offer many benefits to both job seekers and companies. Take a look at how virtual career fairs benefit all stakeholders. 

• Ease Of Access: The ideal candidate for a New York-based company may be in the midwest. With the obstacle of geography removed, recruiters can interact with candidates from anywhere in the world, increasing the odds of finding the best person for the job. 

• Cost-Effectiveness: The cost of virtual career fairs is dramatically lower than that of an in-person event. This allows you to reallocate funds to other aspects of your business. 

• Time-Saving: Virtual career fairs can be set up relatively quickly by hiring managers or recruiting teams. 

• Easily Track ROI: Recruiters can easily rate the quality of candidates right on the virtual event platform. This means you can easily track the ROI of your event and gather essential data to inform your recruitment strategy. 

• Improved Recruitment Marketing: An online event means you will do most of your marketing virtually. You can target lists of candidates from your database with an invitation rather than sort through whoever stops at your in-person booth. 

Virtual career fairs can quickly become the center of your recruiting strategy. Many candidates favor organizations that demonstrate they are improving the recruitment process and offer an experience that suits the candidates.

Interested in hosting a virtual job fair? Here are five tips that hosts of upcoming virtual job fairs can use to improve their virtual recruitment event. 

5 Tips For Hosting An Outstanding Virtual Career Fair 

Have you ever thought about hosting a virtual career fair for your company? It's a great way to connect with candidates from all over the world. In this blog post, we'll be discussing what it takes to host an outstanding virtual career fair with these 5 great tips today!

1. Set Specific Goals

The first step in planning a virtual career fair is to determine the specific goals you need to make this event successful. Career fairs can be used for many purposes, such as:

• Recruiting For Open Positions 

• Finding Internship candidates 

• Career Discovery 

• Networking 

Once you have set your specific goals, communicate them with participating companies to ensure everyone is on the same page. 

Having target attendance numbers in mind is also helpful during the initial planning stages. These numbers will depend on your goals and how many positions you wish to fill. 

Document your goals early to allow for easy measurement of success after the event.  

2. Choose The Right Virtual Event Platform

The pillar of any virtual event is a reliable virtual event platform that meets the needs of all involved.

To make your virtual job fair engaging, you need to offer features that allow candidates to easily share their cover letter, resume, and other documents required for the application process. 

Your virtual event platform needs to offer easy document sharing and seamlessly facilitate a video interview or virtual booth. Choose a virtual event platform with integrated solutions and provide high-quality customer service before, during, and after your event. 

3. Plan The Details And Communicate The Logistics Early 

Planning and communicating the details of your virtual job fair is essential to its success. For large-scale events, confirm the number of companies who will participate, as well as the number of recruiters who will be present. 

Decide if you want to structure the event with live broadcasts, webinars, or an introductory session. You could also assign a virtual booth to sponsors and hiring managers on your virtual event platform and allow attendees to conduct their job search independently. 

Once you’ve set the details, communicate the information early to exhibitors and attendees. Make sure everyone has their login information well before the event begins. 

4. Craft A Marketing Plan

All the planning in the world won’t help your cause if your target audience doesn’t hear about the event. If you're looking for a job, make sure to choose marketing channels that attract people who are looking to hire. 

• Helps you identify the best marketing channels to reach your target audience.

• Find job seekers in any niche market with social media and other marketing tools.

• Learn what types of content perform well on specific social media networks for your upcoming virtual job fair.

• Identify where there are gaps in your industry and locate qualified job seekers.

Recruiters also source candidates on LinkedIn using specific criteria to find potential candidates and directly advertise to them. 

Once you’ve crafted your marketing strategy, send email reminders a few days before promoting high attendance. Always include the event details, such as date, times, schedule, open positions, and a peek at the company culture for participating companies. 

5. Follow-Up With Participants 

No recruitment process is complete without some follow-up. Analyze your event using your virtual event platform’s analytics and reporting tools. Large-scale events should look at which employers received the most traffic and consider why. 

Company-run events can take a look at metrics like the number of qualified candidates and take action. 

Because candidates are probably assessing multiple organizations, whoever creates the best candidate experience will ultimately win. A positive, timely follow-up goes a long way. 

Send emails that outline the next steps immediately after the event. Consider sending out a survey to ask attendees about their experience. 

This is an excellent time to share any recorded videos or resources. Maintain a thankful tone and include calls-to-action based on the candidate’s status in the recruitment pipeline. 

Host A Virtual Job Fair Today 

Virtual career fairs are an increasingly popular staple for hiring managers and recruiters. Hosting a virtual job fair will give your company a competitive edge by building a new candidate pool to use for future job openings. 

For your virtual job fair to go off without a hitch, you need a virtual event platform that offers all-in-one solutions and on-demand content hosting—partner with BeaconLive for all your virtual event hosting needs.