Virtual Job Fairs Can Increase Quantity, Quality of Candidates

by Marc Gutman, chief events officer, Lighthouse Conferencing

Increasing the quality and quantity of job applicants is an ever-constant challenge for today’s HR pros. Effective is essential to a company’s success more than ever. As the world around us continues to move to a more virtual space, so do job applicants.

The good news is that virtual career fairs allow HR teams to rise to the challenge, meet applicants where they are, and increase the quantity and quality of applicants—ensuring a competitive advantage.

Five Reasons HR Should Consider Virtual Job Fairs

1. Wider Reach/Better Sourcing. Stacking a company’s pipeline with top talent is becoming more competitive and is critical to its success. Virtual recruiting provides global reach and enables a company to be where the talent is. In a joint virtual career fair hosted by Regulatory Affairs Professional Society (RAPS) with multiple sponsors, each sponsor received, on average, 750 recruits.
2. Big Cost Savings/Improved ROI. Virtual recruiting platforms enable a company to decrease the cost of acquiring employees by reducing their reliance on agencies, advertising, and travel. They also are easy to set up and have a lower total cost per hire as compared to other solutions. KPMG, for example, leveraged virtual HR to reduce hiring costs by almost $2,000 per new hire, saving them more than $600,000 in one year.
3. Strengthens Brand. Employees want to work with companies that embrace new technology and have an edge. Virtual recruiting allows a company to put its best foot forward with a polished image and gives candidates a feel for the company’s culture and work environment. During another virtual job fair, Haymarket brought in more than 1,200 candidates and reports a return-on-investment of more than 330% from sponsorship sales.
4. Better Engagement. A rich and engaging environment allows candidates to collaborate and have conversations around content; it also fosters a collaborative company culture. Onboarding and employee trainings also are integrated into most virtual recruiting platforms which provide a seamless turn-key hiring and employee management solution. RAPS reached 589 more job seekers, 50 percent more than their standard job board.
5. Improve Quality of Hire/Pipeline of Talent. HR departments are always on a mission to improve their applicant to qualified hire ratio while reducing the time spent screening new applications. Virtual recruiting platforms can provide greater insight on job candidates and existing employees with analytics on actions and behaviors, while reducing the risk of hiring the wrong worker. Recruiting Scope reports that the median cost per recruit is $19 for virtual job fairs.

Virtual Recruiting vs. The Alternatives

Virtual recruiting is gaining in popularity and it’s easy to see why. It’s good for the candidate, good for your HR team, and good for your company. In a world that is rapidly changing, it’s more important than ever to expand your reach and meet prospective employees where they want to be met. Taking your job fairs online allows you to bring in top-tier talent, regardless of their schedule or location.

Virtual job fairs are a trend that will soon be the overwhelming norm—not the exception. Make sure you’re considering virtual job fairs for your next recruiting project because if one thing is certain, your competition is!

Marc Gutman is the chief events officer at Lighthouse Conferencing. He has over 10 years of experience in conferencing and collaboration services and is dedicated to Lighthouse’s mission of being a different kind of conferencing company. When not sharing his passion for remote meetings and collaboration you can find Marc enjoying time with his wife and three small children, cycling, snowboarding, kiteboarding, playing golf, and generally enjoying the outdoors of Colorado.