Recruitment fairs have always been one of the most effective solutions for job seekers and recruiters throughout the years. When our world is getting more digital, recruitment fair planners must adapt to avoid lagging behind in the recruitment race.

Recently, in NACE’s Fall 2021 quick poll, out of 133 responses, 67% reported an increasing change to virtual events compared to the pre-pandemic period.

As technology constantly drives competitiveness in the recruiting landscape, a recruiter with the right support technology can stand out from the crowd, luring top talent into your company. With this being said, here are the three most prominent technologies used in recruitment fairs for your reference:

Top 3 Commonly-Used Technologies in Career Fairs in 2021

Virtual Career Fair

In the past two years, the global COVID-19 pandemic has drastically changed the way people organize recruitment fairs. As recruiting teams plan and conduct virtual recruitment fairs to reach candidates amidst quarantine orders, we have become acquainted with the utility of virtual event software. That’s why this recruiting solution is still widely employed as part of hybrid recruiting best practices in the post-pandemic landscape.

Nace’s Fall 2021 quick poll is a good indication of how employers are steadily embracing the hybridrecruiting process. While in-person recruitment fairs will resume this Fall, most employers are stillplanning to join virtual recruiting events or hosting their virtual recruiting events to supplementtheir hiring efforts.

To be more accurate, a combination of traditional recruitment fair strategies andvirtual ones has already become the new trend amongst businesses.

According to a survey done by Global Focus, around 87% of respondents believed in a continuation of hybrid recruiting events in a post-COVID world.

Source: Freepik

That is to say, in the far future, virtual recruitment fair solutions will still be beneficial for recruiters. Listed down here are some achievable advantages of this technology.

Attract More Candidates

Normally, an on-campus event attracts a specific group of population which is predictably in the neighborhood. But now, thanks to virtual recruitment fairs, employers can funnel in a larger pool of candidates regardless of geographical limitations.

A host can only organize offline events in a specific place with visitor counts limited by the venue’s capacity. With a capable virtual event solution, online events can engage attendees from any location and accommodate up to 10,000 people.

As a result, a virtual career platform is highly efficient - in every way, namely its convenient automation. Manual tasks, such as registration and information collection, can now be automated by the solution or any integrable solution. Recruiters now have more time to focus on extending their reach to previously uncontacted talent pools.

Save Time and Money

Most physical recruitment fairs require your team to perform specific tasks such as finding and booking a venue or staff travel expenses. These things are viewed as significant expenses and surely take plenty of time to finish.

For instance, it will cost you around $8000 for a mid-size event with 300 visitors, and this price can be affected by a multitude of factors like location and duration.

With offline recruitment fairs, your company will also need to pay a specific amount for utility fees. As things go virtually, you can start cutting down tasks and expenses related to in-person events for more essential matters.

Measurable ROI for your events

A virtual event solution can help users identify and capitalize on a wide range of statistics, which could have been partially recorded or outright ignored had they been collected during a physical event.

Most virtual recruitment fair platforms can provide real-time numbers for your immediate references, such as the number of current attendees, which booth draws more attention, which participants are first-timers, and more.

Moreover, conversations through chatting functions will be saved as transcripts so your hiring team can review them at any time for further analysis. These figures can be incredibly beneficial for your team to improve on subsequent events and ultimately maximize your ROI reports.

Career Fair App

A career fair app is a handy solution for recruiters who find it tiresome to manage piles of paper resumes. With the help of a career fair app, you can now streamline your recruiting events. Let’s look at some great features this solution can provide to make your life easier:

Automatically Capture Resumes in No Time

Receiving and organizing lots of resumes for evaluation is always an exhausting part of every in-person recruitment fair. Because later on, you then have to manually input information from each resume into your system, which could be painfully time-consuming and tedious. If none of your members wants to volunteer to do this work, why don’t you find help from smart technology?

A career event solution is a possible answer to your question. A recruiting team with a Career Fair App won’t have to go through a mountain of paper resumes after every event. Instead, the team will have a centralized digital database that requires close to no manual input to import resume data.

Additionally, Rakuna’s Career Event App users now have access to the new Kiosk mode to allow candidates to check in independently. Imagine missing out on prospective candidates simply because your entire team is busy with other candidates. With the Kiosk mode, visitors can simply leave their contact information. Rakuna’s Career Event App can capture that in no time, and you can access them for future campaigns.

Instantly Qualify Applicants

To select the best candidates for an open role, all resumes must undergo an intense screening process. This process may cost you hours if your recruiting team has more than two preliminary rounds of candidate evaluation.

A career fair app is what you need to save more time and human resources during the said process. Admins can set up customized evaluation forms to allow recruiters or your company representative to fill out candidate evaluations as they interact with the candidates at an event. You also have complete control of your recruiting effort using our companion ‘Recruiting Dashboard,’ where you can access all evaluation details, key metrics, and organized candidates’ data.

Effectively Follow Up With Candidates

One of the best features you have in a career fair app is scheduling and sending out customizable email post-events and post-interviews. Whether a mass or individual email campaign, the solution can help your recruiting team automate the process. With automated email campaigns, your team is free to pursue passive candidates. Your prospective leads will constantly be in the loop with minimal manual work.

Candidate Relationship Management

Source: Freepik

Though a candidate relationship management solution is not a new technology, the Covid-19 pandemic has created a golden opportunity for this recruiting solution to shine. As candidates’ experience and relationship development take center stage during and after long quarantine periods, a recruiting CRM is proving to be a must-have tool for any modern recruiting team.

A survey by Beamery presented a future prediction of how recruiting CRM would cover 70% - 80% of the hiring process.

It is no longer surprising to see how a recruiting CRM system can smoothly streamline different stages of your recruiting process, not excluding your recruitment events.

Genuinely, utilizing your recruiting CRM software in organizing a recruitment event brings back exceptionally efficient influences to your hard work.

How Does a Recruiting CRM Help With Your Career Fair?

A recruiting event of any scale could overpower you with its large number of participants and information management. If the situation goes out of hand, it may cause stress and mistakes.

Let’s get one step ahead and start preparing actively!

First and foremost, CRM solutions share one of their strongest points with Career Fair Apps - The ability to integrate with other recruiting solutions. For example, Rakuna often has customers who combine Text Recruiting Solution and Recruiting CRM to invite and track prospective leads even before they attend the event.

All you need to do is simply create and run an automated SMS campaign through our Text Recruiting Solution. The purpose is to invite and allow visitors to fill in necessary data like contact information. The CRM can then capture data and track these candidates based on your criteria. The result is a list of primed candidates ready for the recruitment funnel.

Another integration for your consideration is integrating a CRM solution with an event management platform. This way, the system can effectively overcharge the data collection process. Users can access even more detailed reporting regarding their target talent pools.

For example: As the event management platform measures how your visitors interact with different event elements, your CRM can attribute these interactions to individuals - identify talent pools based on set criteria and begin tracking them. You now have a passive talent pool ready for your team to conduct further branded marketing campaigns, which the CRM will execute.

Honorable Mention: Virtual Reality

Source: Campus Career Fair: VR Headset Tours - GroupM Global Talent Hub

Virtual Reality (VR) technology is no longer a stranger to recruiting events, both in-person and online. The potential of this modern technology to the recruiting world is not yet determined but believed to be increasing over the next few years.

VR technology is predicted to grow rapidly and reach a value of approximately 209 billion dollars by the year 2022.

Therefore, applying virtual reality is an advance in the hiring process thanks to its magnificent benefits.

Bring Candidate’s Experience to a New Horizon

With VR technology, your team can accommodate your candidate’s needs for hands-on experience. By hosting virtual tours, you can overcome the geographical barrier and take your participants around your office, and show them how professional your workplace is.

To make it happen, visitors to your booth can use VR headsets to look at a typical workday at your office and see how your employees work together to create a product. Monitoring compelling experiences like this can increase a candidate’s interest in working at your company. It helps to make the decision-making phase more transparent and manageable.

Polish Your Company’s Reputation

In a technology-driven world, utilizing modern technology like Virtual Reality can bring you closer to those tech-savvy candidates. Providing VR headsets and VR experiences at your recruitment fairs leaves a strong impression on all attendees in general.

Besides, enhancing your candidate’s experience is a win-win situation: they get to see with their eyes how wonderfully real it is working at your office, and you get the reputation of a tech-savvy and forward-thinking company. Marketing-wise, a company can simultaneously improve its candidate relationship management and get a positive branding impression.

1000+ List of Recruitment Fairs You Should Know About

Don’t wait to apply these game-changing technologies to your upcoming event! Consider using the technologies we mentioned in these events to maximize your return on investment (ROI)!

2021-2022 VCU College of Engineering Partner Program

Engineering Career Services Partner Program is an annual recruitment program organized by the College of Engineering, Virginia Commonwealth University. This event will not disappoint you!

Employers at VCU College of Engineering Partner Program can also promote their brands through different levels of participation. This career event allows organizations to communicate and connect with engineering students and computer scientists ready for career opportunities regardless of their scales.

2021-2022 Triton Alliance

Triton Alliance of UC San Diego launches recruiting events every year for its partners. These events are co-branded and planned to fulfill each partner’s core values, including Academic, Community Service, Diversity, Innovation, and Wellness.

At Triton Alliance’s events, employers get various types of support, from logistics to on-campus marketing, to attract potential candidates from the UC San Diego students and alumni. This is absolutely an excellent chance for you to get closer to unvested, highly proactive candidates.

Robinson Employer Summit

Robinson College of Business from Georgia State University commits to organizing Employer Relations Summit annually for registered employers to exchange and develop recruiting strategies.

At this event, participants will have a chance to discuss and attend mini-workshops on different topics regarding career development and recruitment. This summit is also a place for employers to engage with highly qualified and proactive business students from Robinson College of Business and Georgia State University.

2021 NAU Virtual Part-Time Job Fair

The 2021 Virtual Part-Time Job Fair hosted by Northern Arizona University is considered an excellent opportunity for both on-campus and off-campus employers to connect with students looking for part-time employment and internships.

This time, the NAU career fair is hosted virtually on Handshake, opening up a positive and active environment for employers to widen their talent pools with students and alumni from Northern Arizona University.

Download Rakuna ‘US College Career Fairs List Fall 2021 to Spring 2...

These events are only a small part of 1500+ career fairs included in our “US College Career Fairs List” list for Fall 2021 to Spring 2022. Get your masterlist today to know where some of the most talented candidates will gather!

To Conclude

Along with the storming development of the digital era, there has been a drastic shift in the current trend of holding recruitment fairs. In that scenario, it is vital to catch up with the most cutting-edge technologies for your recruiting event.

Promoting virtual recruitment initiatives using Career Fair App integrated with recruiting CRM software is the top priority. It will be a terrific method to boost you ahead in the race to pursue exceptional talent.

And if, after reading this article, you are enthusiastic about our Event Recruit App, give us a call and book your demo today!

To view this original post and other exciting articles, visit us at Rakuna!