5 Benefits of Virtual Career Fairs
Kristine Le
May 3, 2021 11:56:03 PM
Virtual Career Fairs are online career fairs that help recruiters and candidates connect in real-time while saving on time and costs. If you’re is considering Virtual Career Fairs, take a look at these benefits to see how much value they can bring to your recruiting team.
What are Virtual Career Fairs?
Virtual Career Fairs are online hiring events where employers can engage and recruit talent over live chat, audio, and video chat.
Recruiters can use virtual career fairs to hire for a single role, hire multiple roles within the same company, or represent different employers altogether.
Upon entering the Virtual Career Fair, prospective employees can approach recruiters at different virtual booths to learn more about the job openings that interest them the most, as well as apply for roles. Webinars, chat rooms, and digital sessions can also be hosted in real-time.
Similar to an in-person job fair, a Virtual Career Fair can offer a plethora of different open positions or focus on a specific profession or industry. The jobs themselves can be either remote or in-office positions.
Virtual career fairs often have a predetermined start and end time to facilitate live conversations and are generally free for job seekers to enter. Here’s what a virtual career event looks like for an attendee:
What are the pros and cons of Virtual Career Fairs?
While the benefits definitely outweigh the negatives, your team should still consider both pros and cons of implementing Virtual Career Fairs in your recruiting strategy.
Pros of Virtual Career Fairs
It’s efficient — in every way
Virtual Career Fairs provide what a traditional job fair would, but from any location and any device. Recruiters and candidates can easily connect without the expense of travel, time, and other costs that add up over time. With the right recruiting software, your team can help candidates jumpstart the job application, screening, scheduling, and even interviewing process — saving you a lot of time. It’s that straightforward!
It gives your company a competitive advantage
Not all companies are leveraging Virtual Career Fairs to their advantage, despite how beneficial they may be. By choosing to implement these digital career fairs, your company will be ahead of the game in every way. Job seekers are always going to appreciate a more flexible and convenient way of finding and applying to job opportunities, so they’ll surely be impressed with your modern take on career fairs.
It’s the only way during unprecedented times
COVID-19 posed many challenges for the recruiting industry. Recruiters and candidates weren’t able to meet face-to-face due to social distancing regulations, so they turned to Virtual Career Fairs to help keep their businesses afloat.
Virtual Career Fairs provided millions of teams with the resources they needed to hire during the pandemic. The technology behind these digital career fairs was able to help businesses of all sizes hire and fill roles efficiently while staying safe.
While Virtual Career Fairs still serve as a very crucial recruiting tool without the effects of a health crisis, it’s important to keep in mind that they are the only way during difficult times. Having Virtual Career Fairs as a part of your backup plan can be extremely helpful during unanticipated events in life.
Cons of Virtual Career Fairs
It’s not the same as meeting in-person
Face-to-face interactions are unreplicable. A big part of getting to know a candidate entails seeing them in person and observing their eye contact and body language.
A tip to mitigate this is to leverage video calls during your Virtual Career Fairs. It may not recreate the real-life experience, but it definitely can help recruiters and candidates stay connected.
Non-tech users could feel uncomfortable
While it’s safe to assume that most of society is well-adapted to technology, there is still a minority that is unfamiliar with how Virtual Career Fairs work. For this reason, these potential candidates may feel intimidated or discouraged from participating.
To help with this, you can be mindful of how you promote your virtual career event. It’s good to highlight the fact that your company has implemented a simple and easy sign-up and application process. You can also add in a walkthrough guide of how candidates can navigate your career fair or a brief FAQ or directory that can be referred to prior to the event.
Finding the right Virtual Career Fairs platform can be hard
Depending on your business’s needs, finding a Virtual Career Fairs platform can be daunting. There are a lot of different recruiting software companies on the market that may over-provide or under-provide, resulting in higher or lower costs respectively. It’s important to decide on the most important, non-negotiable aspects of a Virtual Career Fairs platform — then do your research to find the best fit.
Why should recruiters use Virtual Career Fairs?
1) Attract more candidates
Virtual Career Fairs have many advantages over traditional in-person events. One of the most apparent benefits of the online platform is an increased hiring and talent pool. By hosting the event virtually, you are able to reach a more diverse and widespread group of potential candidates.
Not only are you able to start communicating with talent outside of your normal reach, but you can also interview people in different cities, states, and countries.
This opens up more sourcing opportunities to attract top-tier talent and find qualified candidates to fit your roles perfectly without excessive travel.
The technology behind virtual recruiting events makes the job search easy, creating a great first impression of your brand.
2) Get more cost savings
Another significant benefit is the cost savings from hosting a career fair virtually.
Traditional career fairs require you to rent out a venue. Then, you have to consider logistical costs as well as food and beverage offering costs.
Flights and hotel rooms to these events for both candidates and hosts also can add up. According to studies, in-person fairs cost $30,350 or more than a virtual career fair, which can start at just $6,000.
None of these costs need to be worried about with a Virtual Career Fair, saving you a significant amount of money.
3)Save time with pre-screened talent
In addition to interacting with more people, you also are able to hire them faster through Virtual Career Fairs. Prospective employees can be pre-screened; if qualified, they can be scheduled for an interview immediately.
Your HR team’s calendars can be integrated directly with the career fair, making it easy to automate the interview scheduling of candidates.
This streamlined hiring process leads to faster hires and higher candidate retention.
4) Promote with ease
Since virtual job fairs are online events, it’s quick and easy to promote them through job boards and social media platforms such as Linkedin, Facebook, Handshake, and more.
5) Track your performance with quantifiable results
Virtual Career Fairs can easily be analyzed using the resulting metrics from your virtual event. The number of sign-ups, attendees, and converted hires can be documented and used to create reports for future reference. Your team can leverage this information to improve your event marketing and talent acquisition strategies.
Who should be using Virtual Career Fairs?
Businesses of all sizes can benefit from using Virtual Career Fairs. With the right Virtual Career Fairs platform, organizations can easily set up their event and promote new jobs to hundreds to thousands of candidates.
Which employers are using Virtual Career Fairs?
Many employers realize the benefit and importance of Virtual Career Fairs and host their own. Below are some examples:
Takeaway
Virtual Career Fairs are beneficial for both recruiters and candidates by helping them connect over a common platform and meet their needs. The results are reduced costs and time savings, benefits both parties can achieve. Whether you’re a small business or a large corporation, Virtual Career Fairs can help you achieve your hiring goals faster and more efficiently.
To learn more about Virtual Career services and how we can fit into your recruiting strategy, schedule a demo with us!