If you want to attract top talent to your organization and keep it, you can’t go wrong with a recruiting event. These events are also a great way to brand your organization and announce it to the world.

Most recruiting events were physical. Then came the pandemic, and most events went virtual for the obvious reason that people wanted to avoid exposure to COVID-19 as much as possible. This prompted employers to allow people to work remotely. Well, this concept was soon extended to recruiting events.

There are many reasons why you should host recruiting events. For one thing, you can make your workforce much more diverse through these events. It has been observed that minority students who attend lower-cost universities are much more likely to attend virtual recruiting events. You can attract the top employees to your company during virtual recruiting events provided you do the following:

Teach Attendees About Professional Development

School’s out because of COVID-19. This means that students have much more free time on their hands. They’re using this free time to learn new and valuable skills or to brush up on skills that they already knew. A professional development session will attract lots of students because these students want to learn how to think, behave, and dress like a professional.

If you are stumped as to what you should include in this type of session, take a few minutes to think about the professional skills that your organization wants and needs. Be sure to make these the foundation of your session. You are always free to add on other professional skills as needed or desired.

You have many options when hosting professional development events. They can take place in the form of online training, masterclasses, or webinars. It doesn’t matter what form of event you host; it won’t be successful if you don’t make it interesting and engaging. Also, make sure that your event adds value for your participants. Be sure to subtly explain why the attendees should be working at your organization and only at your organization.

Include Diversity and Inclusion Panels and Presentations

Students, naturally, want to work at organizations that actually promote diversity and inclusion and don’t just provide lip service. You’re going to have to do much more than include a line that says, “We support diversity and inclusion policies on your website. You’re going to have to prove it, and diversity and inclusion panels and/or presentations are a great way to do this.

This will show potential candidates that you’re serious about diversity and inclusion in your organization. You can always take pointers for these types of panels and presentations from various employee resource groups (ERGs) near you. Company leaders and current employees are also great resources to tap into for these ideas.

Freestyle Question And Answer Sessions Are Necessary 

Freestyle in this context means that the students are allowed to ask any and all questions they want. You should have a member of your executive team present to answer these questions.

Many social media and social platforms like Quora and Reddit have found these sessions to be quite useful in terms of internal communications and external marketing. Freestyle question and answer sessions put students’ minds at ease because it tells them what working at your organization is really like.

Freestyle question and answer sessions are the most successful when they focus on a particular topic. You should have a list of frequently asked questions that you can turn to in order to keep the conversation going.

Virtual Information Sessions

You always want to be building employer brand awareness. After all, you never know when you’ll need to hire employees next in the unpredictable world that the pandemic has created. This can be accomplished through a virtual information session.

You can have employees tell students all about working conditions and the corporate culture at your organization. Students love these sessions because they can ‘be themselves’ while learning all about an organization that they want to work for. Your sessions will be the most successful if you have different high-profile employees working in different break-out rooms. You can cover more topics and give the attendees more individualized attention.

Host fireside chats

Do you remember the intimate nature of those conversations by a campfire? Well, fireside chats revolve around the same concept. In these chats, employees talk honestly with students about a specific pre-selected topic.

These informal chat sessions allow you to let the students see your employees as real kind and compassionate humans. The trick is to ensure that these chats center around a specific and relevant topic.

To learn more about the benefits of hosting your own virtual hiring events or career fairs, contact the team at Premier Virtual for a free demo.