You won’t have trouble finding great video conferencing programs on the market. Let’s face it, without programs like Zoom, this entire pandemic would have been a much more difficult landscape to navigate.  However, when it comes to virtual events, there are advantages to using a dedicated event platform like Premier Virtual.

Ultimately, whether or not you can use a video conferencing program to power your virtual career fairs depends on your needs.  If you’re an employer with just a few job openings, you may want to host a virtual career fair to attract more candidates and gain exposure while doing so.  In that case, a video conferencing program like Zoom can be a perfectly acceptable option.

However, if you’re hosting a career fair with multiple employers or your organization has dozens of job openings with locations throughout the state or country, your needs will far outweigh the features that video conferencing programs can offer for a successful event.

Essentially, video conferencing is just one element in a virtual career fair.  While some of these programs offer additional features like chat and breakout rooms, they don’t include the unique features offered by virtual event platforms that will increase your event’s ability to mirror in-person events.

In the Premier Virtual platform, recruiters can review resumes well before ever speaking with a candidate.  They can also view pre-recorded video resumes.  If the employer feels it might be a good fit, they can enter into a one-on-one chat or invite the candidate into an interview using the integrated video feature.  These features make it possible for recruiters to engage with more than one candidate simultaneously, increasing effectiveness and efficiency.

It’s also important to note that this is not a group chat that everyone else in the room can read.  In the Premier Virtual platform, the job candidate’s communication is always ‘one-on-one,’ securing both parties’ privacy.  The Premier Virtual platform also has a ‘smart-chat’ feature that follows the candidate throughout the event.  This feature allows the candidate to start a chat and continue with the event without having to wait in a long queue or for a response from a recruiter that might be busy at the time.  Whenever the recruiter is available and responds, the candidate will receive the chat message and continue the conversation.

This process is much more cumbersome with video conferencing.  The host or employer would have to schedule an interview with the candidate ahead of time, or the recruiter has to ask that candidate to leave the main group and enter into a ‘breakout’ room.

There are many other advantages to using an event platform.  For example, if you have multiple employers, you can customize the lobby so that each company has its hiring booth, complete with logo, bio, job openings, social media and website links, as well as downloadable PDFs.  Everything you need to replicate an in-person event.  Not to mention the robust reporting that employers receive before, during, and after the event that makes follow-up much more effective.

Event platforms also allow you to scale very quickly without needing additional upgrades or bandwidth.  For example, a recent statewide career fair in Virginia had 350 employers with thousands of job openings that attracted over 15,000 job applicants.  Those are numbers that could never be replicated in person or managed properly using video conferencing software.

Monetizing Your Career Fair

One key advantage is the ability to use our virtual platform to monetize your events.  During Covid-19, many chambers of commerce organizations and event organizers in general, have had significant setbacks due to CDC guidelines for in-person events. Using a virtual event platform like ours allows you to easily monetize events by selling booths and securing sponsorships just like you would in a live event.

The bottom line is if you’re managing hundreds of employers, thousands of jobs, and tens of thousands of job candidates, it is simply beyond the capacity of video-conferencing platforms.  When it comes down to virtual career fairs, choosing a virtual event platform that is dedicated to powering them like Premier Virtual is the wise business decision.

If you’d like to learn more about the Premier Virtual event platform, please visit www.PremierVirtual.com for a free demo.[/fusion_text][/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]