As we all know, the spread of novel coronavirus is having a far-reaching impact on the way we live and work this year. Not only conferences and webinars, but other events, especially recruitment events are shifted from offline to online. Indeed, virtual hiring events can be regarded as a golden opportunity for both employers and employees to connect with each other.
Many people might think that in-person recruitment events usually take place in exhibition halls with countless booths, but actually this is only a type of that event. Want to know about it? Keep reading and realise what exactly hiring events are and also the new transformation of their virtual mode under the implementation of social distancing measures.
Definition of virtual hiring event
Basically, virtual hiring events are held online through a virtual platform where participants, namely the job seekers and the HR representatives from different corporations can connect and interact with each other so as to let the former get hold of the job information and openings.
In actual fact, the presence of original recruitment events is not only confined to the senior or sophisticated labour forces, but also some fresh graduates and undergraduates in various universities campus. Therefore, virtual hiring events include career fairs and expos targeting the tertiary students.
Why are virtual hiring events so valuable?
The values of virtual hiring events are threefold. To commence, it provides both aforementioned stakeholders with a precious networking opportunity. To many big firms, valuable human resources are an indispensable element to them to achieve business success.
Admittedly, HR professionals do have ample channels such as social media and job search engines to approach and unearth potential and talented employees, but those methods are incomparable with directly establishing a network with their intended targets. From the job seekers’ perspective, they can also raise some constructive questions about the jobs and impress the employers.
Aside from that, another advantage of the hiring events lie in the large pool of job opportunities. Since there are nearly or even more than 100 jobs and companies’ booths during recruitment events, participants can then realise the requirements of different jobs and search for the ideal ones for them easily.
The final benefit is exclusive to the emerging mode of virtual hiring event and also the HR professionals. They do not need to physically attend the event and can enjoy remotely being the booth representatives. With more time to answer participants’ questions, they can enjoy greater work flexibility and coordination to work on some urgent matters first if necessary.
Typical examples of virtual hiring event
1. Virtual Career Fair
A virtual career fair bears a resemblance to the physical fair, one of the similarities is that participants can communicate with the booth representatives and view different companies’ job opportunities and requirements. The only difference lies in the fact that they need to manually download the brochures and leaflets from the virtual event platform as well as being patient to wait for the HR specialists’ responses regarding the jobs.
Amazon has moved their in-person career fair to virtual career fair this year. The recruitment event had received around 200,000 applications for 30,000 jobs last year. This time, there are more than 33,000 work-from-home jobs vacancies ready to apply at the virtual event. It enables Amazon to collect resumes and enable the interviewee to talk to Amazon’s recruiter.
PolyU SPEED has hosted a virtual career fair cum Employability Week online for their graduating students in June, offering employment opportunities from 60 companies as well as to enhance their employability. Besides, attendees can also watch the webinar during the event.
2. Webinar
It is particularly common among the hiring events in different universities. Usually for virtual recruitment talks, large corporations would leverage webinar to conduct the talk. Attendees need to click a link and then join the webinar in real time. Sometimes, the host would record the talk for latecomers and absendees to replay the webinar.
How to host a virtual hiring event?
1. Set up virtual hiring campaign site with right virtual event platform
Building up a virtual event page may take a lot of time. In fact, there are a lot of virtual event platform options in the market. Belows are 2 common types of hiring event recently:
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- Web page with simple chat windows that allows attendees to chat with recruiters and submit the resume online.
- A more robust site that obtains exhibition halls, webinar sessions and virtual booths of different recruitment companies and corporations, which is similar to a physical career fair
2. Promote your virtual hiring event online
Build up an attractive registration form and spread it on social media. It can help you to gain more exposure and registrations as much as possible. If you have a group of databases, you may even send them an invitation email to ask them to join the event. Do not forget sending them a warm reminder email in order to increase the attendance rate.
3. Follow up your virtual hiring event
Try to follow up with the job seekers post event. Export the event report to check the attendee’s performance. Send follow up email to high quality candidates to arrange a second interview. If you are the organiser of the virtual hiring event, you can send out the booth statistics and the chat record to those exhibitors so that they can have a better understanding of their candidates.
Conclusion
It is predictable that hosting virtual hiring events will become the new trend for the event industry and continue until the pandemic is over. Without physical presence, both exhibitors and participants can enjoy more convenience and flexibility, thanks to the elimination of commuting time and cost. In face of the deadly COVID-19, it is hoped that this new mode of recruitment events can help to reduce the risk of getting infected and all parties can be safe for the job hunting.
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