Virtual Job Fair?

Hosts, take it to the next level.

I love virtual career fairs. They are awesome. They demonstrate innovation and reach people at their convenience most anywhere. Animation and AI-generated are now making these experiences more fun.

Different styles of virtual job fairs include the campus-like environment where, similar to an interactive video game, you enter a building or lobby area with a main kiosk and different booths or doors representing different companies. This experience is eye candy, but wonky. Or the style may be more of a traditional website with a sidebar and action cards or tiles representing each company. This experience is more vanilla, but easier to navigate. How can we make virtual job fair experiences even better?

Hold a session about resume building in advance of the virtual job fair.

• Share different styles of resumes for people at different points in their career — the new grad, the early to mid-career, and the executive worker.

Also before the event, create a YouTube video of mock job interviews.

• Have solid answers to difficult questions. Add some devil’s advocates, the ones that ask all the illegal and exploitative questions. Jobseekers will gain more confidence to clear these challenges.

Create a test environment, then a LIVE test, in advance of the real event.

• Test the Live Chat Environment.
• Test the Live Video environment.
• Work collaboratively with IT and Vendor teams for troubleshooting.
• Have the IT team brainstorm odd issues (VPNs, etc.) and provide step-by-step instructions to help people through them.

Most companies at these fairs have their own company hotspot, card or tile that jobseekers can mouse over and click for more information.

• By default or upon mouseover or hover, there should be one sentence that the employer would like to convey to jobseekers for that day, even if they do not click further.

Jobseekers are interested. Woohoo!!! They clicked on an employer for more information. Give it to them.

• When the company space, There should be a Welcome tab, an Opportunities tab, and an About tab. All three tabs should contain good information. Make the effort.
• The Welcome tab should contain brief information about that company’s primary hiring initiative, and with a link to the employer’s website Home page and Careers page.
• The Opportunities tab should feature current employment openings. Keep it very simple. If there’s a special requirement that might omit candidates, this would be a good place to list it.
• The About tab should be that company’s “boilerplate” statement. A boilerplate statement is a one paragraph definition of the organization and its mission or purpose, with the official website link as the final sentence. This is often seen at the end of a media release.
• Short YouTube video embeds on the Welcome or About section make things more exciting and brings more traffic and views.
• Not everyone will be able to enter every space and click every link. Spell those links out for them. For example, you can visit me here, or at https://www.linkedin.com/in/leslieagonzalez/

Virtual career fairs may feature many companies for jobseekers to visit each company space in a limited amount of time.

• Chat should be working. Not everyone will chat because they’re surfing the fair and trying to take everything in.
• Live video presentations should be working. If they’re not, have a way to get that presentation posted for people to access later.
• Depending whether it’s a closed invite event or not, the chat may receive copy/paste paragraph spam. Honestly, I feel this should be moderated somehow. Chat should be for specific Q&A or to leave a LinkedIn profile link for a recruiter to reach out later.

Be present. Have several representatives available in chat.

• A virtual job fair may be online, but the customer service experience is just like an in-person event conference booth or an exhibitor table. It is a terrible first impression if the organization is no show.

The online software vendor needs to be readily available, too.

• Don’t be afraid to shop around if the overall performance is poor, especially for more than one virtual event. The goal is a user-friendly experience and positive feedback.

Follow up with attendees in a timely manner.

• The virtual fair host should follow up within 24 hours with a Thank You for attendees and a satisfaction survey.
• Employers should follow up within 72 hours with a Thank You for chat candidates with answers to any questions that were not addressed live.

Check attendees’ progress after 3 months.

• The virtual fair host should follow up again in 3 months with a short survey to ask attendees about their progress.
• In this survey, ask the attendee if they were interviewed, which companies they interviewed with, and how many interviews were held per company with a timespan.
• For each interview, there should be a feedback box for attendees to briefly summerize their interview experience.

Remember, jobseekers are interviewing potential employers just as much as potential employers are interviewing them. With virtual job fairs, accountability by all involved leads to success.