How to Organize a Virtual Job Fair – Challenges and Benefits

1. Why Host a Virtual Career Fair

Virtual career fairs are nothing less than online events oriented to the employment and recruitment sector, in other words custom-designed for hiring companies’ requirements and job seekers’ needs. 

One of the major benefits of virtual career fairs is related to becoming able to provide online access to a global and much wider audience, considering its extreme ease of access. This if not to mention all the cost and time savings, the increased safety and relevance in connections, the easiness of tracking ROI, the improved recruitment marketing and the custom recruiting experience that you’ll be able to offer to specific candidates. Also, engaging with your next hires virtually will become more quickly compared to in person events. While on the subject, get to know how virtual & hybrid job fairs can speed recruitment.

Indeed, virtual career fairs have surfaced as a dynamic solution to help employers break free from all the limitations of traditional hiring events. 

2. Choose a Virtual Career Fair Platform

When you can’t meet your candidates in person, it’s important to choose a solution that can support your virtual experience needs, meaning having the best tools for virtual career fairs, such as video integration. Having these functionalities integrated is the only way to offer a fully uninterrupted experience (without pop-ups or external links). 

Make sure your virtual career fair software has the best interactive video tools to keep your attendees engaged and capture actionable insights based on their interactions, so you can understand the impact and ROI of your virtual career fair.

Meet the flexibility of the beamian virtual career fair platform and supply your recruiting events with powerful networking tools, from virtual stands, online chat and video call interviews to the possibility to host specific sessions, such as webinars and workshops. 

3. Work On Strategy And Planning 

As any other event, virtual job fairs don’t happen overnight. It’s important to don’t skip your needs assessment, from resources, timescales, size of the audience and expenses to the selection of the best software, with the necessary tools. 

These are some of the aspects to consider in planning your next virtual career fair:

• The type and goals of your career fair;
• The expected number of candidates;
• The expected number of companies;
• The cost of your virtual career fair platform;
• The existence / non-existence of sponsorships;
• The shareable content you’ll make available;
• A timeline for your specific sessions, such as webinars or workshops.

Besides planning ahead and if you’re looking for great tips to create virtual career fairs, meet also the 4 essential steps to host a perfect virtual job fair.

4. Simplify The Registration Process And Promote Your Event

Building a successful and fast event registration strategy will increase the number of candidates who complete it, boost their virtual experience and improve their first impression about your event. 

Let students become fully autonomous through a digital registration system that allows them to seamlessly upload their personal information and CVs. By the same token, empower recruiters with the possibility to upload their company information, customize their job offers and also share engaging content with candidates. 

Regardless of how to promote your virtual career fair, ensure you’re clear about what the audience will see. You can also try to leverage co-branded opportunities (such as partnering with sponsors, if applicable), encourage companies and students to promote your job fair and segment event invitations for different types of candidates. 

5. What Features Can Make Your Virtual Career Fair Stand Out 

• Virtual Exhibit Halls: A well-structured list of exhibitors will enable your students to easily search by company name, apply relevant filters or even download a summary with all company details.

• Attractive Virtual Stands: Give recruiters the possibility to offer fully customizable virtual stands that are mobile-friendly and enhance intuitive interactions mid students (through images, engaging videos, links to social networks and shareable content).

• Live Chat: Another tip to make a splash amongst your candidates is to let them interact with recruiters via chat, so they can better decide for which available job vacancies they intend to apply.

• Intuitive Application Process: It’s important to allow students to readily access job details and apply for them, within a simple click.

• Video Call Interviews: Ensure that all applications get immediately visible to the recruiters, so they can schedule relevant video call interviews in a timely manner.

• Flexible Management: As things run smoothly, recruiters should be able to freely add new job offers and either remove or edit previous ones. Also allow them to look for specific candidates, download their CVs and schedule interviews.

• Personal Agendas: Offer visibility about all the available sessions, pre-booked sessions and scheduled interviews in a consolidated personal agenda, both to candidates and companies.

• Live Streaming and Q&A sessions: Don’t forget that your virtual career fair software should natively integrate live-streaming and pre-recorded sessions. That way, you’ll avoid system integration problems.

• Reports & Analytics: When your event is over, make sure you’ll have a comprehensive view of all your sessions and the right data to understand the impact and ROI of your virtual job fair.

6. Keeping Attendees Engaged And Informed

In the end, it’s all about improving attendee experience & engagement because that’s what will make a real difference for the overall success of your virtual career fair. If we think of it, involved students will get more out of it, interact more, apply more and encourage others to do so as well. 

Find out more about keeping your attendees engaged in virtual events.

7. Perform Follow Up Actions Of Your Virtual Career Fair

Following up with recruiters and candidates after virtual career fairs is critical to standing out, since online conversations are typically shorter than at face-to-face events, and they’re likely via chat or video-based. 

So, just like recruiters and candidates should be aware about the best way to follow-up with each other, it’s likewise important for organizers to get feedback from companies and applicants in order to measure success in virtual events.

Talk to us! We’re experts in organizing winning virtual career fairs both for academic and corporate environments.