7 Benefits of Virtual Career Fairs

COVID-19 is reason enough to switch to recruiting candidates virtually; it’s the only way to reach a wide audience of candidates without putting your team and your candidates at a health risk. But many top recruiters have been taking advantage of virtual career fairs and virtual hiring event platforms way before any indications of a global pandemic.

Here are 7 benefits to virtual career fairs, COVID-19 aside. You may see some reasons to stick with virtual career fairs well beyond this pandemic.

Easy access

Perhaps the biggest benefit of virtual career fairs (especially when compared to in-person career fairs) is that virtual events eliminate the obstacle of geography. Candidates can join your virtual career fair from anywhere with the click of a button, making it easier to connect with ideal talent outside your immediate region. The convenience of a virtual career fair -- especially when held over the course of a few hours -- makes it easy for busy job seekers to participate. Anything you can do to make the recruiting process easier for your candidates will improve your results.

Cost savings

Compared to in-person events, the cost of virtual career fairs is dramatically lower. Virtual events have no venue fees, there is no travel involved, and they require much less staff to execute. You can host a virtual career fair with just one or two recruiters (depending on the number of candidates you expect). On top of that there are no extra expenses for swag or refreshments (unless you want to digitally buy your candidates a cup of coffee which is always encouraged in my book!).

Time Savings

Having an in-person career fairs can take weeks or even months. From securing a venue to planning schedules to marketing the event, in person events can be overwhelming. Virtual career fairs, on the other hand, can be set up at lightning speeds in comparison, taking less than an hour to set up a virtual event or your recruiting team. Decide on the theme of your event (hiring for a specific job, diversity hiring, military hiring, etc.) add your favorite culture video, decide which information you want to collect from candidates (resumes, experience, etc.) and you’re ready to go!

More connections

Virtual career fairs allow you to have multiple, private conversations at once. Since everything takes place online, you can chat with multiple candidates at once. This makes it easy to make more connections with viable candidates during a virtual career fair than you could ever dream of making at an in-person event where you can only talk to one person at a time. Plus, virtual career fair platforms, like Brazen’s, will limit the amount of time you have to chat with a candidate so that you are making the best use of your time (and the candidate’s time).

Easily track ROI

Another perk of a virtual career fair is that you can rate the quality of candidates right from the virtual career fair platform. This makes it easy to track the ROI of your event and collect valuable information to inform your conversational recruiting strategy. Within the virtual career fair platform, you can manage candidates as well, by easily moving them to the next stage like phone screen, interview or pipeline for later follow-up.

Improved recruitment marketing

Virtual career fairs improve the efficiency of your recruitment marketing efforts. You can send invitations to a targeted list of candidates in your talent database or ATS and your results will be better than in-person events because candidates know how convenient an online event can be. On average, virtual career fairs have an attendance rate of 50% which is quite high compared to other in-person career events.

Customized for your requisition

Last but not least, virtual career fairs allow you to create a custom recruiting experience for the job seekers you wish to target. You can create and share content that speaks directly to the job seekers you have in mind, through hiring manager videos, job shadow videos and customized FAQs based on your candidate personas. Every aspect of your virtual career fair can be designed  to give candidates what they want Including a healthy dose of authenticity.  

Meet your next hires virtually

With benefits like these, virtual career fairs should be a central part of your conversational recruiting strategy in 2020 and beyond. Candidates will continue to favor organizations that work hard to improve the recruiting process and deliver the type of candidate experience they expect. Virtual career fairs are an easy way to reach that goal, especially considering how quickly they can be rolled out compared to in person events.

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