Virtual recruiting is a hot topic these days. Almost everyone is reshaping their recruiting processes and it’s time you did too. You’re posting on online job boards, starting up employer branding initiatives, and screening candidates over Zoom. Now it’s time to put things into overdrive and set up a virtual career fair.
But let’s back up for a minute. What exactly is a virtual career fair? How do they differ from physical career fairs? Scroll on, we’re answering all questions here.
Before the pandemic, companies used physical career fairs to source, screen, and hire potential candidates. They were useful for recruiters who are looking to hire top-quality talent in a short period of time. This made them popular across the globe. Yet, some factors hindered their effectiveness.
Physical career fairs limit opportunities for talent to access companies, and vice versa. Attendees were mostly people living nearby. At such events, attracting global talent was not an option. The budget and capacity constraints of conventional career fairs contributed to their low return on investment. This put a question mark on the value they offered.
The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc over physical events in the last two years or so. Many companies canceled their regular events, or shifted to the online platform. Thus, it comes as no surprise that career fairs suffered extensively. Organizations and job hunters could not enjoy these events for many months.
These limitations of physical career fairs bring us to virtual career fairs tools. These events are nothing short of revolutionary. If you are looking to recruit for various roles across the organization and want to recruit global top talent, then you need to consider a virtual career fair.
Looking to expand your talent pool and recruit top candidates without the headache of an in-person event? Hosting a virtual job fair is the solution!
We here at Acme Recruiting know that virtual events open doors to find qualified applicants across the country. And we want to see you succeed. So we created the ultimate guide on how to host a virtual career fair.
After checking out these tips, you’ll be ready to rock the virtual recruiting world! Let’s get started.
Why Host a Virtual Job Fair?
Traditional in-person job fairs can be a logistical nightmare. You have to book a physical venue, ship materials, schedule employee travel, and more. It’s exhausting!
With a virtual online event, you simply set up a digital platform and send candidates a login link. Easy peasy!
Virtual job fairs provide a breeze of a setup and other advantages too
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Lower Costs: No need to rent a venue, ship materials, or pay for employee travel. Saving money is always a perk!
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Expanded Reach: Attract applicants across cities, states, or countries. Widening your talent pool means more qualified candidates.
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Convenience: Candidates can join from anywhere without taking time off work or traveling. And you can workforce from home in PJs!
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Post-Event Access: Record sessions so candidates who missed the live event can still participate. Extend your reach even more!
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Data Collection: Virtual platforms make it easy to gather candidate info and track interactions. Measure your ROI with hard numbers.
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Memorable Branding: Digital environments enable creative backdrops, videos, tech tools, and more for an engaging experience.
With so many advantages over in-person affairs, it’s no wonder that 72% of recruiters say virtual job fairs work as well or better than physical events. Make the switch and reap the benefits!
Step 1: Set Goals and Create Your Event Outline
First things first—determine what you hope to achieve. Outlining goals gives direction to your planning and helps measure success.
Some examples of virtual job fair goals include:
- Receive 100+ registrations
- Conduct 50+ candidate interviews
- Hire for 10+ open roles
- Connect with passive candidates
- Promote company culture
- Expand reach nationally
After deciding on objectives, sketch out a schedule. Will you host for a full day or a few hours? What sessions will you include?
Consider options like:
- Company welcome and overview
- Recruiter meet-and-greets
- Panel discussions
- Skills workshops
- Culture showcase
- Leadership Q&A
- Networking rooms
Leave buffer time between sessions to transition and regroup. And mix up program types to keep energy and engagement high.
Once your agenda is set, you can move onto the fun stuff—picking the virtual platform!
Step 2: Choose Your Virtual Job Fair Platform
The right digital platform powers a smooth, glitch-free event while providing useful analytics. Make your choice based on factors like:
Attendee Capacity
Consider your registration goals and anticipate capacity needs. Bigger platforms often allow 500-1000+ attendees while smaller ones cap at ~100.
Built-In Features
Look for must-have elements like video, chat, screen sharing, and breakout rooms for networking and interviews.
Data Tracking
Select a platform that captures attendee info, records interactions, provides reporting, and measures ROI.
Price Point
Costs vary from free to expensive packages with more features. Decide what fits your budget.
Use Appeal
Ensure the platform is easy to use for both candidates and your team with minimal training needed.
Some top virtual job fair platform picks include:
- Zoom
- WebEx
- GoToMeeting
- Google Hangouts
- Microsoft Teams
- Hopin
- TalentHub
Most offer free and paid tiers. Chat with sales or test demos to find the best match.
Step 3: Promote Your Job Fair
Now for the fun part—getting the word out! Without promotion bringing candidates to the virtual door, you won’t meet recruiting goals.
Spread the word far and wide across multiple channels:
Social Media
- Create event pages on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok.
- Post updates leading up to the fair to generate hype.
- Ask employees to share posts with their networks.
Your Website
- Dedicate a homepage banner to the event with the date, time, and registration link.
- Add a website pop-up invitation.
- List the event under a careers or events page.
- Send invites to past applicants from your database.
- Purchase targeted email lists relevant to open roles.
- Ask partner organizations and vendors to distribute invites.
Job Boards
- Post the event on niche and general boards like Indeed, Monster, etc.
- List on talent community hubs like MeetFrank or Honeypot.
Local Promotion
- Pitch to local newspapers, radio, and TV stations.
- Hang flyers at colleges, co-working spaces, and community hubs.
- Advertise on relevant local Facebook groups or Nextdoor.
Step 4: Prepare Your Virtual Fair Team
Rally your recruiters for their time to shine! To make the best impression on candidates:
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Set up profiles: Have recruiters activate accounts on the platform with headshots, bios, and contact info.
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Conduct dry runs: Schedule practice sessions to test the technology and workflows.
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Assign roles: Divide up tasks like moderating sessions, monitoring chat, and candidate interviews.
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Review talking points: Provide guidelines, suggested questions, and facts about roles, culture, etc.
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Set expectations: Share event goals and ideal outcomes to work towards.
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Share schedules: Ensure all recruiters know their assignments and responsibilities.
With advanced preparation, your team will be poised to connect with candidates and represent your employer brand.
Step 5: Build Your Virtual Environment
Candidates will interact with your virtual space more than people. Make it memorable and engaging!
Company Website
Candidates will visit to learn more. Make sure pages like “Careers” and “About Us” are updated to make the best impression.
Session Screens
Use appealing branded backgrounds and videos to set the scene. But don’t distract from the main event.
Chat Box
Introduce your company, share links, and post icebreakers to facilitate conversations.
Digital Swag
Provide free downloads like wallpapers, ebooks, coupons, etc. to create buzz.
With the right digital ambiance, you can convey what makes your culture special.
Step 6: Exhibit at the Event
The big day is here! Time to put your planning into action.
Tech Checks
Log in early to test audio, video, WiFi, screen sharing, etc. Troubleshoot any hiccups.
Welcoming Remarks
Kick off with an overview of the company, culture, and agenda to get attendees excited.
Chat Engagement
Recruiters should actively chat and answer candidate questions during sessions.
Networking Rooms
Send recruiters into breakout rooms to mingle with candidates one-on-one.
Interviews
Transition promising applicants into private video chats to assess fit.
With active exhibiting, your team can forge meaningful connections with candidates.
Step 7: Follow Up
The job doesn’t end when the fair does! Follow up to keep top prospects engaged.
Thank You Notes
Send quick emails thanking all registrants for attending.
Contact Top Prospects
Check in with promising candidates about fit and discuss next steps.
Share Open Roles
Send applicants job links that match their qualifications.
Extend Invitations
Invite standouts to upcoming webinars, virtual lunches, and other events.
Connect on Social Media
Add impressive candidates on LinkedIn and company social pages.
Following up fortifies your relationships with talent. Don’t miss the chance to secure high-quality applicants!
Make Your Next Event a Virtual Success!
And that wraps up our tips for hosting a standout virtual career fair!
Ditching physical fatigue and costs for the digital world makes recruiting events easier and more effective. Using the right strategies attracts and engages top talent.
We hope these tips help you rock your next online job fair. Let us know if you have any other questions. We’re always happy to chat recruiting!
Here’s to connecting with your perfect candidates virtually. We can’t wait to see you dominate digital recruiting. Go get ’em, tiger!
Monitor Performance Metrics
You shouldn’t be just focused on how to set up a virtual career fair, but also be concerned about the outcome of the event. Possibly, the most crucial advantage that virtual career fairs have over their physical counterparts is their ability to clearly show the fair’s ROI. Since visitors are in a monitored environment, actions like clicks, downloads, CV uploads, and views are easily measurable.
These metrics can also help you in evaluating the content type and features that were popular among the audience and those that did not work. These metrics help hosts and organizers visualize the attendee journey, and get insights on audience behavior. This is especially valuable for marketing and recruitment purposes.
The data you gather at your event will help you and the recruiters see how many visitors have logged in, and where they spend the most time. Using this feedback, you can improve your future events and recruiters can gauge their hiring procedures.
Promote Your Virtual Career Fair
As with a physical career fair, the real challenge lies in getting relevant candidates to attend. You can have the most interactive event around but it won’t guarantee registrations unless many people know about it. This requires marketing at every step of the event, from pre-event processes to post-event reports.
Market your virtual career fair through social media networks, PR channels, email marketing, and advertising with partner companies.
Try to use integrated marketing campaigns to promote your career fair and make use of a diverse range of marketing tools to reach the widest audience. You should also include relevant resources like user guides.
It is best to include a user guide for visitors. You should share this guide during registration, so that your attendees are well-equipped on the day of the event.
Talk your attendees through with what to expect, how to navigate and how to benefit from various facilities such as networking lounges, etc. Make them aware of all the resources available for them to view and download.
Ensure that your event remains at the top of your attendees’ minds by sending out regular reminders to registrants via direct mail, social media, in-event announcements and other communication channels.
Set up trigger events. For instance, if an attendee registered and they haven’t logged in, send them a quick reminder so they can join in.
Once the event is over, you can leave your event ‘live’ for those who didn’t make it to come and browse. Offer recorded webinars and workshops to those who could not attend the live event. You can also leave the chat tool live, so that visitors can leave questions long after the event has ended. Just remember to continue checking on the chat regularly until the event closes for good!
In addition, you should offer up a few resources for your exhibitors and visitors to make the transition from physical to virtual career fairs smoother. One useful resource could be offering tips for employers and exhibitors.
Give your exhibitors what they need to be familiar with virtual events. Most recruiters will appreciate a user-friendly guide for setting up a booth at your event. Include this guide in your event pitches, and also offer tips to help them get the most out of your virtual career fair.
These tips can talk about features such as chat tools, job boards, webinars, appointment scheduling, virtual briefcases and many more.
Best practices for hosting a virtual job fair
How to host a virtual job fair?
Hosting a virtual job fair requires planning and goal-setting from the get-go. You need to set milestones in order to deliver your virtual event platform well before time. There is an increase in people recruiting online, and job seekers looking for online avenues. It is better to set a checklist that helps you guide through your planning process.
Should you host a job fair online?
Hosting online events can help people take part in important networking events that could help them advance their careers. Virtual job fairs can also benefit employers who attend. Because some fairs target a specific audience, they provide recruiters with a more refined group of potential candidates.
Should you host a job fair on vfairs?
Virtual event platforms like vFairs can allow organizers to extend the age of the job fair with on-demand hosting. So, if you are hosting a job fair for larger organizations or would like access to the event platform for longer, it is totally up to you. Here are some of the biggest differences between in-person, virtual, and hybrid job fairs.
Are virtual job fairs a good alternative to traditional recruiting events?
Virtual job fairs are a great alternative to traditional recruiting events. Online recruiting events enable candidates from across the country, or even the globe, to attend. This aspect means you connect with a wider audience and have the opportunity to promote your organization on a larger stage.
