6 reasons employers should attend an online career fair or host their own online event to find top talent

Further, if you’re an employer that has set up shop at an in-person career fair, you know how easy it is to just blend in with the other employers at the event. The image below does a good job at showing that.

High costs, low impact. My business professor would be shaking her head at that return.

So why do we continue to do them? For one, momentum. Or, as our scientific brethren would call it, inertia. What is in motion, stays in motion. And employers and universities have been doing in-person fairs for a long, long time. That should hardly be a reason to continue.

The only other reason I could argue for continuing to do an in-person career fair would be because you want to maintain a long held relationship with a University. Otherwise, online events or virtual career fairs are the future.

As an employer, you have a couple options in order to move your events online. One, you can find an association, membership or university that is already hosting an online career fair to join or you can host your own. In either case, here are six reasons why online events and online career fairs are ruling the day when it comes to finding great talent.

6 reasons to go online

1) Differentiate: If you’re an employer that decides to host your own online event (see the Ericsson example below) then it absolutely allows your brand to stand above the noise of all the other employers trying to hire from the same candidate pool.

2) Lower costs: Avoid all the costs associated with in-person career fairs such as travel and lodging costs, shipping costs and even missed work.

3) Control: With an online event, you control the set up, who attends, and who you want to talk to resulting in a more efficient recruiting process.

4) Wider reach: An online event or online career fair allows you to reach candidates from all over the world. No longer are you limited by your physical location.

5) Mind the communication shift: Whether you’re a millennial, a Gen Xer or Baby Boomer, we all communicate online through messaging apps such as Facebook messenger or through text messaging. Online event and online career fairs offer the same form of communication. Take advantage of this shift.

6) It’s about time: With online events and online career fairs, you choose the time or times that are most convenient for you and your attendees. Want to host an online event over lunch on a Thursday because it is the only time the passive candidates you are trying to hire can connect with you? No problem.

Combine in-person and online

While there are many advantages to online events and career fairs, there are some legitimate reasons to do in-person career fairs as long as you are combining them with online events and career fairs. According to our customers that have decided to pair the in-person with the online, in-person career fairs give recruiters a chance to conduct in-person interviews with lots of candidates. Seems efficient, right?

Not so fast. The catch is that if you don’t do the proper screening of candidates before the event, you’re bound to waste time with unqualified candidates. That’s where online events and career fairs come in to play.

Ericsson takes it online

Take one of our client’s, Ericsson, who does an excellent job at pairing in-person events with online events. Before coming to Brazen, they had found time and time again that when they attended in-person career fairs they were just one of dozens of other employers trying to compete for the candidates that everyone else was competing for. And this just wasn’t going to cut it when they had to fill open positions.

So they came to Brazen to help them stand out and improve the efficiency of their hiring process. The first step was to host an online event that took place prior to the Grace Hopper Celebration Conference (which is the largest gathering of women technologists).

By hosting an online event exclusively for its own brand and own positions prior to the in-person event, Ericsson was able to stand out from the crowd of other employers that would be attending the in-person event and attempting to hire from the same pool of candidates.

Ericsson heavily marketed its online event and received almost 700 registrations. Even more important, Ericsson recruiters were able to have online conversations with this top talent and set up interviews with only the best talent for the day of the in-person event. This allowed Ericsson recruiters to make the most of their time at the conference.

As you can see, online events and online career fairs are an efficient, effective and convenient way to connect and engage with top talent. If you’d like to learn more about how you can add online events or online career fairs to your mix of recruiting strategies, contact us to see a demo of our online event platform.

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