The 25 Best Virtual Career Fair Platforms Available to You 2023

Virtual career fair platforms are one of the fastest-growing industries and things aren't expected to slow down any time soon. So whether you are a company looking to host a virtual hiring event to find top talent or a University looking to connect your graduating students with employers or an organization looking to host a multi-company virtual career fair, we’ve got you covered in our best virtual career fair platforms of 2023 review.

What is a Virtual Career Fair Platform?

Before we dive into the top vendors in this space, let’s explore what we mean by a virtual career fair platform. A virtual career fair is a type of online recruiting event that helps recruiters and hiring managers interact with job seekers at various stages of the candidate journey. These events are one component of an effective virtual recruiting strategy. A virtual hiring event platform is a tool designed specifically for this purpose.

In this article, we'll cover: 

1. What to Look for in a Virtual Career Fair Platform
2. Compare Virtual Career Fair Platforms
3. Virtual Career Fair Platform Features
4. The Key to Virtual Recruiting

What To Look For in a Virtual Career Fair Platform

With so many virtual career fair platforms to choose from, which offer so many different types of candidate experiences, it can feel overwhelming to search for a solution that meets your needs. Here are some criteria to keep in mind as you learn about your options.

1. How much experience does this vendor have?
2. What kind of security protocols help protect user data?
3. How would the vendor respond to a data breach?
4. What specific services does this vendor offer?
5. What level of customer support is available?
6. What kind of training is offered prior to the virtual job fair?
7. What devices are supported for accessing the platform?
8. Does the platform support video live streaming?
9. What level of customization is offered?
10. Is there a custom registration form you can personalize for each event?
11. What metrics are tracked and what are the reporting capabilities?

This overview will help you explore the best virtual career fair platforms on the market and choose the best partner for your organization.

Enjoy!

Compare Virtual Career Fair Platforms 

1. Brazen Virtual Career Fair Platform
2. vFairs
3. Hopin
4. Hallo
5. Handshake
6. Whova
7. CareerEco
8. Premier Virtual
   
9. EasyVirtualFair
   
10. 6Connex
    
11. Talentspace
    
12. GR8 People
13. Paradox
    
14. HexaFair
    
15. GradLeaders
16. iCIMS Talent Cloud
17. Symplicity Recruiting
18. Brella
    
19. XOR
20. eCareer Fairs
    
21. Career Fair Plus
    
22. Communique Virtual Conference
    
23. Eightfold.ai
24. EventX
    
25. Cynaptx

#1 Brazen Virtual Career Fair Platform

Brazen is the most experienced vendor in the world of virtual career fairs. Founded in 2007, Brazen offers a wide range of tools to help employers, universities, and organizations connect virtually, including single-company virtual hiring events, multi-company virtual career fairs, video interviewing, live video broadcasts, live chat, and of course a top-rated virtual career fair platform and recruiting event solution.

Brazen is consistently recognized as a top vendor in the virtual event space by Capterra, G2, and Select Software, based on customer reviews. Brazen deeply understands the challenges of employers looking to hire qualified candidates in this virtual world or universities looking to help their graduating students find that next best career. Companies like Spectrum, CVS Health, Northrop Grumman, and Walgreens, and top Universities like USC, NYU, Temple, Carnegie Mellon, and a whole lot more host virtual career fairs regularly on Brazen’s platform and users report that the tools are “very easy to use and user friendly.”

In other reviews, users tout the cost and time savings in their hiring process. Here’s an example from G2Crowd: “Our sourcers loved the ease of use for the tool and the ability to chat with multiple candidates at once, it not only made things much more efficient in the long run, but it saved them tremendous amounts of time by funneling in a large [number] of candidates for recruiters in a short amount of time.”

Brazen enables clients to set-up virtual career fairs at their chosen date and time that are tailored to candidates with certain skillsets, job functions, industries, locations, and more, in order to hire the best talent and hit hiring goals. This flexible service makes it easy for recruiters to focus on their biggest sourcing challenges. For example, one reviewer on Capterra reports using Brazen’s virtual career fairs to reach candidates with active security clearance to work in the Department of Defense space.

Other companies use it to find candidates for management-level positions or warehouse and logistics staff. Employers promote online career fairs via social media and email lists, and recruiters will soon be able to use text recruiting to invite past applicants from their database.

Lastly, Brazen is the only virtual events platform to offer video interviewing and live video broadcasts right from its own platform. No external solutions or third-party tools are necessary.

And beyond the obvious boost to the candidate experience and employer brand, Brazen clients are ultimately hiring two times the number of potential candidates compared to companies that do not use their virtual fair platform.

With top-notch customer service and a constant push to innovate, Brazen is one of the best virtual career fair platforms available for recruitment teams of different sizes.

Best for: Prospective employers with 1,000 or more employees with high-volume hiring needs, colleges and universities, workforce development agencies, professional or industry organizations.

#2 vFairs

vFairs was founded in 2008 and offers a 3D environments-based platform for companies to host a variety of online events including training, trade shows, expos, and career fairs. Customers span across industries and include a few big names such as Purina and T-Mobile, as well as a number of smaller brands. Similar to the Brazen platform, vFairs is a software provider that allows recruiters to host custom events specifically for their company, at the date and time of their choosing, and customer reviews are largely positive, with users touting the ease of use and good customer support as two key benefits.

The downside? Because of the wide variety of event options vFairs offers for their virtual experience, recruiters may be overwhelmed or distracted by irrelevant features during the interactive event. As one customer wrote, “with so many options and possible areas to explore, customers may have a hard time navigating and finding specific information they are looking for.”

Best for: Small and mid-sized businesses that want a single platform to host virtual events for recruiting and non-recruiting purposes.

#3 Hopin

Founded in 2019, this London-based company has gained a lot of ground since its inception. This platform describes itself as a virtual venue for live online events, it falls short of being a conversational recruiting platform and lacks some of the robust virtual event features of more established virtual event platforms, such as the ability to gain insights on guest profiles while in a chat or prioritize and queue attendees throughout an event. However, Hopin does offer a variety of areas within a single event—the Reception, Stage, Sessions, Networking, and Expo area—each with the ability to host customized content for a richer attendee experience. For some users, the experience can be overwhelming or confusing. According to a G2 user: “the chat box function does not seem very useful when there are more than 20 participants because it gets over-flooded with comments,” making meaningful conversations difficult.

Best for: Small businesses that are looking for a free option.

#4 Hallo

Hallo is a platform designed for event organizers who specialize in campus recruiting. It offers marketing, promotion and student registration services, and also enables employers to join multi-employer events at no cost. Users have generally given positive reviews of the service. However, Hallo does not curate events for specific industries, position types, or job postings, so recruiters might end up wasting their time if the attendee mix doesn’t align with their open job reqs.

Best for: Campus recruiting, entry-level hiring, and small teams that need sourcing help.

#5 Handshake

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Handshake was best known for connecting students and recent graduates to employers through its website. This vendor launched a virtual job fair platform in response to the pandemic, so their offering is still fairly new. Their career fairs are designed to help student job seekers learn more about potential employers through group meetings and 1:1 chats. Handshake touts access to more than 10 million students and alumni. The platform has mostly positive reviews, with criticisms centering around communication, ease of use, and visual appeal. As one G2 user writes, “you don't receive any email notification whenever someone schedules a meeting with you on Handshake. You have to manually check the calendar to see if anyone has booked a session with you, which can be cumbersome.” 

Best for:Entry-level recruiting, universe career services.

#6 Whova

The Whova virtual event platform is used by some recognizable brands, including American Express, US Bank, Microsoft, Hilton, Lego, IKEA, and L'Oreal. The platform has hosted a wide variety of virtual/hybrid conferences for associations, education, government, corporate events, trade shows, expos, and community gatherings—but because this platform was not purpose-built for recruiting, it’s difficult to discern how well-suited it might be for talent acquisition teams. Criticisms from event participants call out Whova’s simplistic user interface, lack of technical support, and limited mobile functionality.

Best for: Organizations that do not want a dedicated talent acquisition solution.

#7 CareerEco

CareerEco was founded in 2009 and hosts a variety of online event experiences, including virtual career fairs as well as online events for universities to connect prospective graduate students and alumni with employers, graduate schools, and other professional organizations. Clients include a variety of academic institutions and organizations focused on helping students and recent graduates launch their careers

CareerEco promotes the environmental friendliness of virtual career fair events compared to physical ones and emphasizes their benefits in terms of time and money saved. It is a selling point which is applicable to all virtual event companies.

Testimonials hosted on their site are positive, but there is scarcely any feedback to be found elsewhere on the web about their online job fairs. It’s clear that CareerEco has a niche carved out, but there is little information available on their website about how their virtual career fairs actually work. For high-volume talent acquisition teams outside of academia or other educational institutions, CareerEco is probably not a good fit.

Best for: Colleges and universities, associations that work with students and recent graduates.

#8 Premier Virtual

According to their website, they are a multi-functional software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform designed to bridge the gap between technology and human interaction. They mention that they work with employers and universities in a wide range of industries including education, workforce development, healthcare, and the military. Uses reviews are scarce, although generally positive.

Premier Virtual does offer something many vendors on this list do not: a dedicated Client Success Manager to help customers navigate the event setup process. While these folks are surely experts on the platform’s features, we’re unable to determine how familiar they are with the unique challenges and best practices of talent acquisition amid the Great Resignation, a talent shortage, and other economic uncertainties.

Best for: Small businesses.

#9 Easy Virtual Fair

Easy Virtual Fair offers virtual career fair solutions for SMBs, universities, and government organizations. They have a mobile-friendly platform and the service is focused on connecting recruiters with candidates who are "on the go." There aren’t many user reviews available for Easy Virtual Fair but most are positive, applauding the platform’s ease of use, “top-notch customer service,” and video chat options.

Event hosts can also customize virtual events with their own branding and unlimited booths to tailor the candidate experience. Easy Virtual Fair offers metrics and analytics to evaluate the efficacy of your virtual hiring events and calculate your ROI.

Best for: Small and mid-sized businesses.

#10 6Connex

6Connex is a virtual event platform that offers services to sales and marketing teams such as virtual trade shows, virtual career fairs, virtual summits, and e-learning programs. This vendor can provide the tools to replace in-person conferences, host hybrid events, or facilitate professional development for existing employees.

Using 6Connex for talent acquisition is just one of the many use cases this platform touts. While there is a great deal of overlap in delivering a great candidate experience and a great experience for attendees of other types of virtual events, employers that are committed to competing for top talent may prefer a recruiting software solution dedicated to that purpose.

Best for: Companies that want a single virtual event platform for internal, external, and recruiting events.

#11 Talentspace

Easy to infer from its name, Talentspace focuses on employers, career centers, and workforce development agencies. The platform offers a range of features to enhance the candidate experience, including 1-1 Chats, Presentations, Workshop sessions, and Live Booths. The majority of Talentspace attendees are students, so this is not the best recruiting solution for companies looking for experienced or mid-career candidates. User reviews are limited but mostly positive. This G2 user said, “Very easy to set up events, invite employers and participants. User-friendly platform.” On the downside, Talentspace does not support the ability to stream recorded presentations or content, so employers that want to offer a multimedia candidate experience with recorded video will need to look elsewhere.

Best for: Entry-level hiring and employers targeting student hires.

#12 GR8 People

This vendor describes their solution as “The Everyone Platform.” Marketing a recruiting platform as a ‘one size fits all’ tool may seem like a smart strategy but it silently glosses over the unique needs that certain employers may face, such as those in high-volume industries or teams seeking out hard-to-find talent. Founded in 2015, GR8 People offers solutions throughout the recruiting funnel, from sourcing and attraction to engagement and hiring—but the vendor does NOT offer an out-of-the-box virtual career fair platform. Instead, they offer few tools that can complement virtual career fair platforms.

Best for: Employers that do not want or need an all-in-one virtual career fair platform to manage the entire application process.

#13 Paradox

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Paradox launched an event solution that does not include virtual career fairs. Instead, they provide an "event assistant" to assist with planning, promoting and scheduling in-person and virtual events and interviews from a mobile device. They are most recognized for their recruitment chatbot technology, Olivia, which focuses on scheduling interviews with candidates visiting your career site or job req landing pages. Some of Paradox’s clients include high-volume hourly employers like McDonald’s, Speedway, Wendy’s, Lowe’s and Olive Garden. This is a great solution if you need a recruiting chatbot that is untested in the virtual career fair space.

Best for: Risk-takers, employers still hosting high-volume in-person events as part of their recruitment strategy.

#14 HexaFair

Mostly used for brand marketing events, HexaFair offers a variety of features that are also attractive to talent acquisition teams. This vendor offers an event landing page and online registration, a virtual lobby, and multiple virtual booths with options for video streaming, Q&A sessions, and virtual networking. While employers could certainly use this platform to host virtual career fairs, it lacks several crucial features, such as the ability to view a candidate’s resume within the event, rate that candidate, forward to a hiring manager, and collect feedback. We were also unable to determine what, if any, metrics and analytics are available to customers.

Best for: Small businesses that host virtual brand events occasionally want to use the same platform for recruiting.

#15 GradLeaders

Designed for career services and campus recruitment, GradLeaders offers a range of tools for job posting and distribution, talent sourcing, intern management, and virtual career fairs. Its virtual career fair platform has fully embedded live video for 1-to-1 or groups, with built-in screen sharing for presentations. The platform is mobile-friendly and includes in-app messaging between participants, as well as real-time engagement reporting. Based on its website description, GradLeaders sounds like more of a virtual interview tool than a full-service virtual event platform so if you’re looking to create a robust candidate experience, this may not be for you.

Best for: Internships, remote interviews for entry-level positions.

#16 iCIMS Talent Cloud

When iCIMS acquired TextRecruit, the SMS and chat-based recruiting tools, it initially expanded the software’s functionality to include virtual career fairs. However, it looks as though that move was short-lived, as this video conferencing tool currently does not offer a virtual career fair platform or online hiring fair environment. iCIMS has opted instead to offer text recruiting services through an employer's careers site, with separate solutions for an applicant tracking system, candidate relationship management, and employee tools that support onboarding and internal mobility.

Despite the lack of virtual career events, iCIMS works with 40% of the Fortune 100 which collectively employ more than 34 million people around the world. User reviews are largely positive, with many championing the applicant tracking system for ease of use and compliance. According to one G2 reviewer, “iCIMS is extremely user-friendly, has customizable workflows, and is suitable for our global company requirements.”

Best for: Employers that want an ATS solution and simple chat-based recruiting.

#17 Symplicity Recruiting

Symplicity aims to assist higher education institutions in providing their students with the tools they need to begin successful careers. They do this by allowing employers to post jobs that are displayed to students at more than 600 universities in Symplicity’s network, and employers can engage with interested students through that portal and gain access to a searchable resume database. User reviews are scarce but clients include Amazon, AT&T, CVS Health, and USAA. However, Symplicity does not offer virtual events for employers to host or join, so it doesn’t enable employers to reap the full benefits of virtual recruiting in their digital strategy.

Best for: Employers that need help sourcing for a high volume of entry-level and early career positions.

#18 Brella

Brella is suitable for use in traditional, hybrid, and virtual conferences and exhibitions. Some companies have utilized Brella's video tool for virtual career fairs, but user reviews are mainly from teams using it for large meetings, conferences, or networking events. The platform offers mobile accessibility, online registration, customizable booths, integration with live stream providers such as Vimeo or YouTube, in-app private messaging and many more features.

Best for: Companies that want to host large meetings or conferences and use the same platform for virtual career fairs in their recruiting process. 

#19 XOR

Another solution born out of the COVID-19 pandemic, XOR does not offer a virtual career fair platform. Instead, it promises AI tools that “help businesses hire blue-collar workers for only $500 per hire.” XOR offers fully automated talent sourcing, candidate screening, and interview scheduling—all powered by artificial intelligence and sold to employers for a rock-bottom price. While AI tools can be very helpful in speeding up the hiring process, we’d caution employers about turning so much responsibility over to AI, especially amid a talent shortage. Today’s job seekers demand and deserve a personalized candidate experience, which AI tools simply cannot deliver right now or in the foreseeable future.

Best for: Risk-takers, employers with budget to burn in their hiring funnel.

#20 eCareer Fairs

Despite claiming to have been “hosting events since 2015,” little is known about eCareer Fairs and user reviews are almost nonexistent. According to its website, clients include some big names like Amazon, Cisco, Nike, and Salesforce but the handful of customer testimonials are all from much smaller companies. The website’s product description says its platform includes online candidate registration, recruitment marketing services, unlimited virtual event booths, one-on-one meetings with chat or video, and event metrics. While the platform seems to offer the basic structure for virtual interviewing, we’d hesitate to call this a true virtual career fair solution, since it lacks live streaming capabilities, group video, and some of the other popular features that help employers host engaging, immersive virtual recruiting events.

Best for: Employers looking for a basic virtual interviewing platform, not a white-glove service.

#21 Career Fair Plus

Career Fair Plus is another vendor that offers a virtual interviewing solution rather than a true virtual career fair platform. CF+ (as it’s also known) offers one-on-one and group video chats with customizable timeslots, virtual booths with recorded video candidate profiles, and analytics. There isn’t much information on its website about the solution—nearly every product page dead-ends with a contact form. We’d like to see more about CF+’s features, including event screenshots and videos, to learn more about how this option stacks up against others on the list. As of the time of writing, there are less than 20 scheduled events listed on the website’s searchable “fairs” list, leading us to assume this solution isn’t being widely used by industry experts yet.

Best for: Small businesses that need a virtual interviewing platform solution.

#22 Communiqué Virtual Conference

This company is headquartered in Bethesda, MD with offices in the UK, Australia, and Singapore. Similar to vFairs, Communiqué allows visitors and presenters to navigate through 3D event environments and virtual environments such as lobbies, theaters, resource centers, exhibit halls, and networking lounges via customizable avatars that can interact with elements within the virtual space. Its virtual career fair platform offers tools to schedule audio and video interviews for one-on-one or small groups, and interactive booths employers can use to showcase videos and documents or host prize giveaways. There is no mention of candidate profiles or in-app resumes on the vendor’s website so it’s unclear how cumbersome this experience would be for recruiters and hiring managers. If you want your event to have a video game-like feel, this platform is a viable option.

Best for: Small businesses hosting events for small pools of candidates.

#23 Eightfold.ai

Eightfold.ai is an AI-powered talent intelligence platform and is also relatively new to the virtual career fair space. However, they do not feature or have any information on their website about virtual events or virtual career fairs. Instead, eightfold.ai offers AI solutions that help manage the recruiting cycle, from requisition to offer, and promises to reduce time-to-fill within months of use. AI technology helps screen candidates so that employers can more easily find candidates with the right skills for each open position. While tools like this can certainly help speed up hiring time, we caution employers to consider how this might impact the quality of those hires, especially in the absence of an immersive virtual career fair experience.

Best for: Employers that need a talent management solution but not virtual event hosting.

#24 EventX (formerly EventXtra)

EventX is another new player in the virtual career fair space and this vendor’s tagline says it all: “Events Anywhere, Anytime, for Anyone.” EventX is not specifically designed for talent acquisition teams so it’s unlikely their support team has the expertise to help employers host successful virtual career fairs on the platform. The company’s website is incomplete with placeholders in the nav bar and lacks basic information about available products, features, use cases, and customer testimonials.

Best for: Honestly, even we’re not sure, so we advise caution.

#25 Cynaptx

Cynaptx was founded in 2016 in Irving, Texas. It’s a career service management solution that targets students, schools, universities, colleges, and alumni groups. This Microsoft ecosystem startup is powered by Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Teams, and offers a communication interface for organizations already using these tools. The platform includes a candidate database, invitation management, and candidate-driven interview scheduling based on recruiters’ preloaded availability. Cynaptx promises thorough support along the way, as well as attendance tracking and survey capture for fair attendees.

Best for: Employers that are loyal to Microsoft Teams and comfortable using the product.

BONUS: Other Solutions that *Might* Work

Some of the following platforms were built for general virtual event management and not expressly designed for recruiters—yet some TA teams are using those solutions to host virtual career fairs, with mixed results. 

Here is a look at some of those platforms.

#1 Bizzabo

Founded in 2011, Bizzabo calls itself an “event success platform” for in-person, hybrid, and in-person events. While they offer pre-built integrations with third-party software, some customers have reported dissatisfaction with the high costs of these added software connections, so be sure to factor that into your budgeting calculations when comparing different options.

#2 BrandLive

Brandlive has been around since 2010 and is an established video software company, but they are relatively unknown as a virtual career fair platform. They offer virtual event solutions with a focus on broadcasting live and recorded videos, but do not offer booth functionality. They use social media integrations to support interactions between presenters and attendees.

#3 Zoom

Zoom has seen a huge influx of users this year as it became one of the most popular ways to stay connected with friends and family while physical events were discouraged and social distancing was the norm. While Zoom wasn't designed as a virtual career fair platform, many recruiters rely on the video conferencing tool to communicate with prospective employees. However, beyond conducting a few video interviews with candidates, Zoom is not built to efficiently screen, interview, and hire. Trying to schedule and conduct interviews with more than a few candidates will become extremely cumbersome. Currently, Zoom does not offer features that directly support hosting a virtual career fair and there are no built-in features to track event performance.

Virtual Career Fair Platform Features

1. Multiple-device accessibility: A virtual career fair platform has to have an easy-to gets -use, mobile-friendly candidate experience. Look for a platform that candidates can access from their desktop or mobile device, without any additional software downloads required.
2. Live chat: An ideal virtual career fair platform equips you to chat with candidates via text, audio, and video based on each conversation. 
3. Video interviewing: A robust virtual career fair platform enables you to screen and interview candidates directly on the platform with no additional integrations needed, all native within the platform - and equipped for multiple device types, including desktop and mobile video interviewing.
4. Video broadcasting: With a video broadcast feature, you'll be able to present to all candidates simultaneously in a live presentation on the platform. Ideally, there's a broadcast chat discussion feed, the ability for many presenters to participate, and broadcast recording features as well.
5. Interview scheduling: With native interview scheduling, a virtual career fair platform will allow you to schedule conversations with candidates prior to a career fair event so that you can ensure your team is prioritizing conversations with top candidates. You can also use these for recruiter screening calls and hiring manager interviews - all within one recruiting event.
6. Event promotion tools: Recruiting event promotion tools like event tracking links, custom landing pages, job requisition plug-ins, and a sourcing marketplace that enables you to drive targeted job seekers to your hiring events help you get the right candidates to your hiring events.
7. Custom branding: A virtual career fair platform with its own content management system will enable you to fully customize an event brand and experience. You want to look for a platform that allows you to share welcome videos, downloadable content, booth-hosted content, and more so that you can provide candidates with the most relevant information about your organization - all with your own unique branding and messaging.
8. Customized booths and event lobby: With a true virtual career fair platform, you'll find a host of important features that set them apart from free video conferencing tools that create a better candidate experience. For example, an event lobby welcomes candidates, shares information, and is easy to navigate. Booths that are customized to each employer, department, team, or factor that employers wish to feature create an engaging candidate experience.
9. Follow-up features: A great virtual career fair platform does more than simply host the event; it enables your team to quickly follow up with top candidates and move them on to the next steps. Look for calendar integrations, email and follow-up capabilities, and more. This is an important area where the right platform can really boost your return on investment, so don't overlook this feature set. 
10. Analytics and reporting: Look for your virtual career fair platform of choice to give analytics on attendance rates, chat data, sign-ups, ratings, and more.
11. Candidate screening tools: Save valuable recruiter time with customizable registration forms that enable your team to move some candidates forward to attend the event, and equip you to follow up with unqualified candidates about opportunities that better align with their experience and skills. 
12. Customer support: With so many different types of users participating in virtual career fairs - from candidates to recruiters to employers to hiring managers - it's critical to have a robust support team that is skilled in helping every type of user with their needs. Make sure that live support will be available during events via online chat or phone.

Virtual Career Fairs Platforms: The Key to Virtual Recruiting 

When moving to virtual recruiting events and hybrid events, talent acquisition professionals and universities need to partner with a technology vendor that understands today’s challenges and has been around for the long haul. Finding a vendor that comprehends the TA ecosphere and recruiting process in a holistic way, beyond the immediate goals of sourcing and hiring, can be a challenge. By comparing vendor services in the context of the broader business model, talent acquisition leaders and company representatives can make informed decisions about where to invest in a virtual career fair platform that can ultimately save time, money, and improve both the candidate and recruiter experience.

Still not convinced virtual career fair software fits into your recruiting and talent pool-building strategy? Read more in this post about how online career events and hiring fairs will save your company a lot of time and money.