5 Tips for Successful Multi-Employer Career Fairs

While no two events are alike, there are some tried-and-true best practices to help you host an incredible multi-employer career fair— especially if you’re looking to add a virtual component to an existing event series — or need to quickly stand up an online event to replace a previously planned in-person event.

Try implementing one or all of our top suggestions to make your multi-employer job fair a resounding success for both planners and attendees alike!

1) Create a Compelling Event Landing Page

Design parallel landing pages that embody the theme of your employment fair while also including information that is highly relevant to employers and candidates looking for new hiring fair opportunities. For prospective employers, include fast facts such as the number of expected candidates, their experience levels, the hiring industry, employment types (contract, full-time and part-time positions), the location of the event and/or hosting platform, number of representative seats, as well as the benefits of becoming an exhibitor (which should be many!). For the career seekers' landing page, frame some of the same information in a way that will quickly attract their attention. Drop the names and logos of the most attractive employers in attendance and tout the wide variety of open roles your virtual multi-employer career fair will feature. A clearly identifiable call to action or form should also be included on both landing pages to make it as easy as possible for employers and candidates to sign up or get news about your upcoming event.

2) Promote and Market Your Career Events

Whether your talent community is already set in stone or you need to promote your event to new job seeker audiences, employers are counting on you to bring in a good number of prospective employees that will fulfill their respective hiring needs, so it’s important to have a good advertising strategy and budget in place to promote your event to the right target audience, and to market your events on your owned media channels as well.

There are many avenues to promote your event, from emails to your existing database, to social media, to programmatic advertising. A good place to start is by aligning your event marketing strategy with your event persona types. For example, if your event is focused on connecting entry-level hires in a particular field with employers, it’s probably a good idea to promote your event on social media platforms that are popular among people in this demographic. Take a look at past event data to gather attendee demographics to help inform this strategy.

3) Show Attendees What to Expect

Good event hosts know there's no such thing as over-preparing. In fact, the more your attendees and employers know about the event in advance, the better they will be able to leverage it to its full potential. But don't think that you have to schedule meetings with each and every company or job seeker independently to get the message across. Rather, use the technology and resources at your disposal to facilitate these conversations with everyone in efficient, scalable, and cost-effective ways.

Want examples? You could post informative how-to videos on your event landing page that can be shared, reused, and watched on-demand to cut down on the work for your planning team. Prepare digital or physical welcome packets for attendees outlining the day's events and showing where they can find select resources and assistance based on their profiles. Share attendance insights with employers in advance so they'll be able to staff their booths accordingly.

From the high-tech to the low-tech, there is no shortage of creative solutions your team can implement to make sure your guests are always up-to-date and in-the-know at your multi-employer hiring event.

4) Provide a Help Booth During Your Events

From commonly asked questions to technical support, help should always be available at your in-person or virtual fair events to the employers and attendees who need it most. Establish a central help booth for your team to staff so that they are always online to answer any questions that employers or attendees have during the event. Plus, having an easily accessible resource like this helps build trust between your organization and those attending your event.

5) Equip Booth Owners

A great event day experience isn't only for candidates; employer experience is also key! So don’t forget to give your virtual event booth owners the tools, training, and information they’ll need to walk away seeing your event as a smashing success. This means doing things like communicating registration numbers in advance so that each team can properly staff their booths to provide a great candidate experience (remember: communicating is caring!), giving them insights and best practices to follow, and providing timely assistance during the event. Look for event software (like Brazen's virtual event platform) that also offers live chat event technical support so that if anyone needs technical troubleshooting, there’s someone on standby to facilitate those needs.

With these best-practices in tow, you can be certain that your attending employers and job seekers will be primed to have the most epicly-successful virtual career fair possible!

Like this post? Try these!

• 5 Creative Ideas for Virtual Multi-Employer Career Fairs

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