One of the best strategies for expanding your reach, tapping into new talent pools, and attracting hard-to-find talent is joining multi-employer virtual recruiting events. To be really effective and competitive, employers also need to host their own virtual events to nurture the talent they connect with through expo events.
The key is to build a full-funnel hiring event strategy that addresses each stage of your recruiting funnel. At the awareness stage, you want to focus on how you are attracting candidates, which should include attending expo events and inviting job seekers to attend screening events before they apply. From there, you want to curate hiring events that personalize the candidate experience and encourage job seekers to move down the funnel, including information virtual recruiting events (e.g. meet the team, employee resource group (ERG) events, executive meet and greets).
Let’s take a look at why this strategy is effective and how hosting your own virtual recruiting events can help you make the most of your talent acquisition efforts.
Attracting Talent is the #1 TA Challenge Right Now
Participating in multiemployer or expo events helps you address this challenge head-on. Because the organizations that host these events have already cultivated a talent community—full of job seekers that trust them to bring quality employers—these events are a perfect opportunity to tap into talent markets that you wouldn’t otherwise have access to. Connecting with candidates through expo events helps you bring fresh talent into your pipeline and, as we all know, that’s only the beginning of a successful employer-candidate relationship.
Leveraging expo events is a straight-forward way to improve your talent sourcing, especially if you’re targeting specific types of candidates, like recent graduates or job seekers in a particular geographic area. You can tap into new talent networks by partnering with universities, industry associations, workforce development agencies, and other types of organizations that curate multiemployer virtual career fairs.
Once you’ve built awareness with candidates you’ve met at expo events, you need to cultivate those relationships further with a detailed plan for nurturing the fresh talent in your pipeline. With that goal in mind, hosting your own virtual recruiting events is a game changer.
Hosting Virtual Recruiting Events Gives You an Edge
It’s not 2019 anymore. This means it now takes more effort on the employer’s part to keep candidates engaged through the recruiting process. We know this because of the rise of candidate ghosting, as well as the increased competition for top talent.
Another thing we know is that virtual recruiting events are effective at increasing engagement. In a recent survey of job seekers who attended a virtual recruiting event on Brazen, nearly all (98%) of the respondents said they are more likely or as likely to pursue a job opportunity when there is the option to join a virtu event as the first step in the process.
When the recruiting process is easy and convenient for job seekers, results seem to be better. One way to provide a more accessible and lower stress candidate experience is by hosting virtual events on a platform that job seekers are already familiar with. Doing this also enables you to capture more of the candidates’ attention and build your employer brand, have more control of the messaging, and tailor events to the positions you’re focused on to personalize the candidate experience. This is all part of prioritizing candidate experience and relationship-building, which is the key to successful recruiting in today’s talent market.
Virtual Events Build Engagement at Every Stage of the Funnel
There are many different types of virtual recruiting events you can host at each stage of the recruiting funnel.
- Awareness: Information-based events are highly effective for building awareness. These include general info sessions on your organization’s culture and mission, meet-and-greet events with leadership, and Q&A events.
- Consideration/Interest: Events that address candidates’ curiosities and concerns work well for building interest and keeping their attention. Host virtual events where job seekers can learn from and interact with current employees, use ‘day in the life’ videos to illustrate what it’s actually like on the job, and spotlight your ERGs in events to give job seekers even more insight into your culture.
- Application: Time and again, we’ve advocated for offering candidates as many alternatives to a standard application form as possible, as a means to keep them moving forward and avoiding the “application black hole” that many job seekers experience. In this stage, virtual recruiter office hours, online chat sessions, and informational events about employee benefits and perks can be useful for encouraging continued engagement.
- Selection: Even after a candidate accepts a job offer, there’s a chance you could lose them. Hosting virtual events before the start date and throughout the onboarding process help keep talent engaged, especially when those events foster a sense of belonging in your organization’s culture.
Own Your Candidate Experience
Hosting your own virtual recruiting events to cultivate the talent you attract through multiemployer events (and other sourcing strategies) puts you in full command of your candidate experience. You determine the tone and messaging of your virtual recruiting events, giving you the ability to convey your employer brand and organizational culture in the best possible way. And because virtual recruiting events are so flexible and scalable, you’re not locked into a singular approach. It’s easy to adjust your events over time and in response to the results you’re seeing, so you can continue progressing toward your hiring goals even as they change from one quarter to the next.
Like this post? Try these!
- Virtual Career Fairs: Should I Still Be Hosting Them?
- 83% of Job Seekers Prefer Virtual Recruiting Events
- How Virtual Recruiting Helps You Build a More Diverse and Inclusive Candidate Experience
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