Frustrated with your hiring efforts? No longer sure how to recruit top talent? It’s time to try the new kid on the block: virtual career fairs.
You’re a top recruiter who knows how to do your job well. You know where to look for candidates, the best ways to attract top talent and how to vet candidates online before recommending them.
But even if you’ve spent years placing candidates, many recruiters are now realizing that the methods they’ve always leaned on are becoming less effective. Candidates ignore LinkedIn messages because they’re inundated with In-Mail and much of it is spam. Social media is increasingly noisy, making it more difficult than ever to develop a meaningful connection. And, as always, the best candidates typically aren’t looking for a job, so you have to find them, rather than the other way around.
But you'er in luck. We’ve got a solution, and it’s one that an increasing number of recruiters rely on to bring top talent into their organization. It’s an idea that’s been around for a while, but is only now being truly optimized for recruiters: virtual career fairs.
What’s virtual career fair and how does it work?
Chances are you’ve heard of an in-person career fair before, but hardly thought about taking that concept online. Now we’re not talking about webinars, which tend to be one-way broadcasts. Instead, and what we see work for recruiters in various industries every day, is a virtual career fair that allows for one-on-one conversation, or real-time, text-based chats.
We first stumbled upon this concept years ago, and called it Network Roulette. Professionals who were looking to network with others in their niche could join one of our networking events, get paired randomly with other professionals, strike up a conversation, and make new connections.
In the years since, we’ve complemented the serendipity of our events with a more strategic component, helping recruiters meet and vet job candidates quickly, all from the comfort of their home or office using the virtual career fair concept.
Not convinced? Here’s how recruiting through a virtual career fair will save you time and money -- and help you do your job better.
Attract better talent
This is the big goal for every recruiter: to find that gem of a candidate that will make your employer oh-so-happy they hired you.
So how does recruiting online increase the quality of your candidate pool? Because it’s easy -- even fun -- for candidates to participate. Passive candidates in particular won’t go out of their way to attend a job fair. But it’s not so hard to convince those same quality job seekers to attend a virtual career fair to learn about an opportunity, which means you’re able to bring in high-potential people who otherwise might have passed.
Even passive candidates are curious about what other opportunities might be out there for them. They might not agree to a full day, in-person career fair, but you can probably convince them to take just 10 or 20 minutes out of their day to talk with you and others who work at the company that wants to hire them -- they won’t even have to take an hour off work!
This format also gives you a leg up with candidates who aren’t particularly comfortable in social situations, allowing them to get comfortable with you and the idea of a new job from behind their laptop before moving to an in-person interview. Making it easy for candidates to learn about what you have to offer is one of the best ways to both broaden and improve your talent pool.
Virtual career fairs are efficient, decreasing your cost per lead
Know what costs money? Visiting candidates in person, or investing in transportation to bring them to you. Even worse? Spending money to vet a candidate who turns out to be a poor fit.
That’s why you should screen candidates through a virtual career fair before moving to the in-person interview. Virtual career fairs, which take advantage of one-on-one text-based chat is a great way to get a feel for a person’s skills and experience, for insight that goes way beyond their resume. Even more importantly, chatting online through a virtual career fair can help you determine whether a candidate might be a cultural fit for your company, a component that’s increasingly important to employers.
Cost per lead is an essential metric for recruiters these days, and every good recruiter looks for ways to decrease it while still maintaining high-quality leads. We love hearing from recruiters who have used our platform to decrease costs, because that means we’re not only helping you do better work — we’re giving you a tool that improves the bottom line, too.
Avoid traffic, travel and headaches
Best of all, you can take advantage of virtual career fairs without leaving your office. No sitting in traffic, trying to stay calm when you realize you’re going to be late. No late-night flights across the country to meet with the latest must-have candidates. And no fast food, uncomfortable hotel beds or slimy motel gyms.
Real-time virtual career fairs aren't just convenient for the candidate; it’s convenient for you. And we all know that the less time you have to spend in a car or on a plane or carting boxes of swag to a job fair, the happier you’ll be.
Have you tried recruiting through Brazen's virtual career fairs? If not, you can check out a product tour here.
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