How To Enhance Engagement Rate In Virtual Hiring Events
Virtual event platforms have helped businesses to such a large extent that a career fair can be organized at the click of a button. While it saves time and money for the company, it also makes plenty of opportunities available to nervous and sometimes travel-averse job aspirants.
However, with virtual being the norm now, how do you attract and engage the best talent at your next virtual job fair?
You must start promoting your event at least four to six weeks in advance. This allows you a long time to establish brand recall.
Use different social media platforms and email to communicate with your prospects. Focus on witty and powerful messaging while pushing your prospects to take action. If it is a job fair that you are hosting, then consider partnering with your participants to also host shorter pre-event workshops to help applicants prepare. Don’t forget to finish it off with an incentive to attend the actual event.
2. Choosing the right virtual event platform
When it comes to choosing the right virtual event platform in India, always make sure to pick one which mimics real-world scenarios. Today’s platforms allow you to create a simulation of your venue complete with halls, lounges, banners, floors, etc. In fact, event technology has advanced so much that you can walk up to someone on an event platform and strike up a conversation.
Primarily, you need a platform that can be customized to fit your needs and has good engagement and networking tools.
3. Support your participants with bright booths
For your virtual job fair, you need the same vibe that an in-person job fair would have. Help your participants set up interesting booths that include attractive videos, quizzes, interactive games, short tips, etc. There are some virtual platforms such as vFairs, Almond Virtex, Hopin, Airmeet gives you the facility to customize your booth according to your brand’s look and feel. Using brand colors will help your participants level up their brand appeal as well.
4. Employ more networking options
One of the biggest benefits of job fairs is networking. Make use of interesting AI-based features to match attendees to participants, breakout rooms, and the like which will ramp up interactions and help aspirants find a job that they like and your participants find a suitable employee.
5. Leverage social media
If your job fair is being attended by a younger group of aspirants, then utilize social media tools to your advantage. From setting up an event page to posting updates, questions, polls, videos, spotlight captures, the list goes on. You could take engagement a notch higher by getting your attendees to use their LinkedIn or Instagram handles to register and tag them in posts that are relevant to them.
From a live job board to playing treasure or scavenger hunts and solving puzzles together, there is a lot you can do to boost engagement among attendees. Another effective way is to introduce goodie bags from different participants. Events with better incentives usually have a higher engagement rate too.
Today, virtual recruitment or career fairs are being considered a profitable way of meeting with potential employees, sharing their company’s vision, philosophy, and showing a sneak peek into their culture.
So, when a well-known name in remote and hybrid jobs, FlexJobs hosted a virtual career fair in January 2022, it became a smashing success. After all, virtual events are cost-effective, easier to organize, and have a far wider reach.
The far-reaching impact of virtual events can also prove to be a thorn in your side because of the quality of leads you generate. In this case, you want your virtual job fair to attract the best talent so that participants can recruit successfully. But, how do you drive attendance for your virtual event?
Getting more qualified leads is always about making the right choices. And it all begins with the platform.
Organizing A Successful Virtual Job Fair
1. Choose the right platform
Businesses are quite spoiled for choice when it comes to deciding on the right event platform. However, it’s quite easy to get struck by the paradox of choice. Every virtual event platformtoday claims to be the best and offers personalized experiences. However, you must do your homework.
Choose a platform that is flexible, easy to operate, provides plenty of engagement options like live chat, HD video streaming, polls, quizzes, individual booths, etc.
2. Set up your objectives and strategy
Everything that you do will be driven by these two factors. So, be sure of the number of participants you expect, what you want them to gain, what your budget is, how long your career fair is going to last, and so on.
3. Make a team and start pitching
Once you have a plan in place, you must start executing it. You need a solid support system to help pitch your event to businesses and if you don’t have your own team, you can always choose event platforms that help with pre-event legwork. For instance, Virtex has a team that can also do outreach for your event.
4. Promote your event
Now that you have a list of participant organizations, you need attendees, who are preferably seeking jobs or information related to certain jobs. This is a crucial stage because you need the right people for your event. A few platforms in India can provide you with tools to promote your event through social media by segmenting your target audience and designing tailor-made campaigns for them.
5. Engage with your audience
Once it has begun, how are going to drive participation for your virtual job fair? When you choose your virtual event platform, you must also hold it accountable for its usability.
For instance, can it really be personalized to mimic the feel of a real job fair- all with a large convention hall, booths, stalls, banners, attendees walking around, etc?
Similarly, can the platform customize your booth to provide the attendees a 3-D experience of an interview, or an interaction with recruiters?
Platforms like Virtex are constantly innovating and building a strong AI-powered base to help companies provide immersive and lifelike experiences to their attendees.