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Virtual Career Fairs & Other Online Recruiting Events

First--a freebie! Your new eGuide goes beyond defining virtual career fairs to reveal:

  • Who hosts what types of virtual recruiting events
  • Why virtual recruiting is advantageous
  • How to plan a stress-free virtual career fair or recruiting program
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Four former college and university recruiters launched CF+ in 2012 based on the shared certainty proprietary software could enhance employer and job seeker interactions during in-person recruiting events.

Today, more than millions of applicants have connected with tens of thousands of employers during dozens of different types of recruiting programs.

 

Listening to our customers to provide career fair technology and various solutions that solve real problems is rewarding. Our purpose at Career Fair Plus (CF+) is to save event organizers time while improving outcomes for their job seekers.

Our eBook, Virtual Career Fairs & Recruiting Events, is your free, portable guide to everything you always wanted to know about virtual recruiting programs but didn’t know whom to ask!

 

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Make Virtual Recruiting Work for You

If you recruited employees or organized career fairs in 2020, you likely attended or hosted at least one virtual event. COVID-19 made virtual career fairs necessary; the open access, time savings, and cost-efficiency made them popular.

Today, event hosts are looking for easy, reliable solutions that are easy to produce and intuitive for attendees.

The five sections of this article introduce virtual career fairs, the pros and cons of these events, and steps to help you maximize the benefits for job seekers and hiring specialists.

 

What is a Virtual Career Fair?

A virtual career fair is an internet-based recruiting event hosted by a corporation, university, or organization to create employer-candidate connections online. These events are delivered on custom platforms accessed via websites or mobile apps. Depending on the technology, program hosts, employers, and candidates benefit from various features.

The software also informs what other types of virtual recruiting events you can host besides career fairs. The more robust the platform, the wider the variety of online recruiting options you can offer your employers and job seekers.

Read our 3 Popular Virtual Recruiting Events before your next planning session!

 

sector

Who hosts what type of online recruiting events?

Leaders in multiple sectors choose virtual career fairs and a wide variety of other online events to optimize their recruiting funnel without negatively impacting quality, personal interactions, or cost.

 

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Some Pros & Cons of Virtual Recruiting events

Virtual recruiting provides several advantages over in-person events because they are:
  • Easier to organize: You don’t need to contract a space, arrange food service, or set up (then take down) tables and chairs.
  • Budget-friendly: If you’re a recruiter, not traveling to a physical site saves money, whether it’s airfare and lodging or local mileage reimbursements. And event hosts don’t need to assign resources to receive and move employers’ advance booth shipments.
Virtual online recruiting also offers:
  • Better crowd control: Welcome an unlimited number of attendees without risking long lines or exceeding building capacity.  
  • Immediate and useful post-event feedback: Learn engagement levels, assess customer satisfaction and analyze deeper metrics to determine ROI.
And these programs also present some challenges. These potential hurdles are manageable, of course, especially if you know what to look for ahead of time:
  • Technology: We could probably stop there, and we’d all understand the possible issues. Relying on technology for recruiting is the same risk as any other business activity dependent on the internet or a computer. Which means everything’s likely to work just fine.
  • Forced separation: Candidates and employers aren’t in the same room. However, virtual fairs are more personal if an on-site program requires social distancing and prohibits handshaking.
  • Learning curves: There’s a one-time learning curve with a new platform. However, if you choose the right partner, they’ll support hosts, candidates, and employer teams before, during, and after the event.

 

Read more in Recruiters, answer these 5 questions to win at virtual career fairs!

 

why

Why should I host a virtual recruiting event?

 Because online events offer multiple opportunities to:
  • Accelerate time to hire
  • Eliminate event day scheduling surprises
  • Expand the talent pool with higher participation levels
  • Facilitate purposeful conversations with well-informed candidates
  • Organize candidate profiles
  • Personalize interactions
  • Showcase employer branding

 
Because online events enhance the candidate experience:
‣ Flexible Scheduling

Replace chat queues with confirmed meeting times

‣ Video Rooms

Unlimited bandwidth to customize 1:1, group, and panel sessions

‣ Intuitive Navigation

User-friendly interface increases engagement

‣ Live & On-demand Training

Attend weekly webinars and access Help Desk articles

‣ Real-time Tech Support

Talk or chat with real people before, during, and after your event

‣ Reporting & Analytics

Assess program success and track candidate status with unique metrics for event hosts and employers

‣ Resume Drop

Swap paper files for digital files to share in one click

‣ Event & Booth Check-in

Track attendance and candidate engagement with employers

 

Read more in Lucky 13: Revitalize your recruiting event marketing and 6 Important Steps to Ensure Your Virtual Career Fair Runs Smoothly

 

PLAN-A-CAREER-FAIR-GRAPHIC

How do I plan a virtual recruiting event?

Trust your experience.
You’ve done this before (even if you’re new to virtual recruiting).

Everything you need to know about hosting a virtual career fair you already learned planning on-site events. It’s a similar process made easier with time-saving automation, customizable schedules, multiple meeting formats, and a bunch of easy-going, happy people at CF+ ready to help!

 

Before

  1. Define your event: Career fair? Open house? Hiring event?
  2. Build your custom event by collaborating with CF+
  3. Schedule complimentary live training with CF+
  4. Invite employers and candidates
  5. Promote 
  6. Monitor registration & scheduling

During

  1. Drive traffic with push notifications in the CF+ app
  2. Check-in with employers and candidates 
  3. Support participants (CF+ helps!)

After

  1. Exhale
  2. Thank your team
  3. Gather feedback
  4. Follow-up with employers and recruiters as you choose
  5. Schedule your next event with Career Fair Plus!

Check out 6 Important Steps to Ensure Your Virtual Career Fair Runs Smoothly

 

Testimonials

Why are Career Fair Plus Customers Thrilled with the CF+ Platform & People?

Because our software is easy to use and we work as hard as our customers to deliver a productive, rewarding virtual career fair.

 

‣ "CFP helped us get a virtual fair up and running in an incredibly short amount of time!”

Amy Aldridge
Employer Relations Specialist, Office of Career Services
Southeast Missouri State University
‣ “Your system is still going to be my go-to for any future career fairs as it is easy to navigate for students and employers and gives me (the administrator) much more control over the fair than the previous one I used."

Sue Clayton
Senior Recruiting Specialist
Syracuse University  |  Whitman School of Management
‣ “I have to say that CF+ has been, by far, our most positive experience. It was stable, easy to adopt, intuitive to use, and performed head and shoulders above the other platforms.”

Kevin Foster
Campus Relations Manager
Intel Corporation
‣  “Students appreciate that everything is in one place. i.e., the video platform is held with CFP, so students don't need to go elsewhere on the day."

Chloe Jacob
Events Officer, Careers & Employability Centre
University of Sussex
‣ “The employers especially liked the fact that they could see students' resumes before and during meetings."

Sue Clayton
Senior Recruiting Specialist
Syracuse University  |  Whitman School of Management
‣ “Students liked the 1:1 appointment opportunities, not having to wait in line.”

Laura Lemza
Assistant Director for Career and Industry Advising
VCU College of Engineering Career Services
 
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Expand your format options, and choose a hosting partner whose technology platform offers more than chat queues or virtual profiles.

The CF+ enterprise recruiting platform is uniquely built to host virtual, on-site recruiting events and hybrid recruiting events. You can capture high-level ROI analytics when you add special features like Check-in, Resume Drop, and Meetings to your in-person programs.

Schedule a call with one of our super-friendly problem solvers who can explain it all. (That's a thank-you rhyme for reading this whole blog!)

 

Read more in COVID-19 Introduced Me to Virtual Career Fairs, and Now I Never Want to Go Back

 

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