What Are Virtual Job Fairs and Why Are They Important?
f you’re an employee recruiter, you’re probably familiar with the term “online job fairs” or more specifically, “virtual job fairs.” 2021 was an extremely challenging year for these individuals where the job market was concerned, especially since the pandemic ruled out the traditional recruitment process indefinitely. With the inconsistencies of the US economy, job recruiters were pushed over the technological tipping point and compelled to use digital technologies for recruiting purposes.
What Exactly is a Virtual Job Fair?
In the simplest of terms, virtual job fairs are similar to webinars (web seminars) wherein job seekers and job recruiters meet virtually (online) in chat rooms, teleconferences, or webcasts to exchange information about employment opportunities. Furthermore, a virtual job fair is comprised of several virtual elements that replace in-person events. These include virtual:
conference halls
employer booths
information desks
lobbies
meeting rooms
networking lounges
Once logged in, a participant can enter any one of the above areas, interact with a variety of employers and other attendees using different communication tools. It helps them explore the available employment options while companies can look at potential candidates online. This has been extremely useful, especially during the pandemic, where in-person meetings and interviews were not possible.
In addition to complying with safety and health guidelines, virtual job fairs offer 3 key advantages and benefits to recruiters that range from cost-effectiveness to increased accessibility. These advantages and benefits include:
Cost-effectiveness and better time management – in-person recruitment fairs are very costly due to the need for accommodations, logistics, technical assistance, and more. Additionally, organizing and setting up in-person recruitment fairs can be extremely time-consuming, depending on the size of the event.
Greater reach – due to their unlimited capacity, virtual job fairs can attract up to 10 times more traffic and can operate on a 24/7 basis to accommodate all time zones. This global reach is a key selling point for job recruiters.
Improved analytics – analytics is reshaping the business environment and enables better decision-making. The same is true with virtual job fairs. Furthermore, hosting virtual job fairs provides recruiters with tons of data that can be utilized in recruitment marketing campaign strategies.
As a result, virtual job fairs have become extremely popular and are now included in many HR processes on a global scale. Businesses and corporations that never imagined the need for virtual job fairs before are now reaping the benefits of them. Are you interested in hosting a virtual job fair? Call Premier Virtual at (561) 717-9717 or send us a message by clicking here.
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.
People were beginning to work remotely even before the pandemic, but COVID-19 accelerated this trend. The latest research shows that employees who want a completely virtual or hybrid work environment tend to make for better employees. Global Workplace Analytics did some recent studies. According to its findings, 43% of workers who were forced to work at home during the pandemic want to continue with this.
Remote working is never going away as it benefits companies because it allows them to access more talent in a global workplace.
How To Turn Work from Home Challenges into Opportunities
Working from home is not without its issues though. There are challenges present both for employers and employees. Companies that want to give their employees the work-from-home option must make sure that employees have the right technology and uninterrupted space to work in.
Parents with small children may face many interruptions and overachievers may spread themselves too thin in terms of workload versus time available to do it in. Also, with video conferencing. Both employers and employees must learn new etiquette and skills in terms of interpersonal communication, soft skills, and emotional intelligence.
Supervision issues emerge in a remote workplace. Employers are forced to devise new and creative ways to reward good and productive employees. They also have to deal with HR issues much differently.
If companies want to do remote working successfully, they have to make sure that the managers are good listeners in a virtual work environment. They also have to ensure that their managerial practices are in sync with remote working and the remote office. Managers have to strengthen their relationships with remote workers to ensure that they create a bridge for better and stronger communication in the future.
Companies can seek help from a virtual events company for pointers and help, such as:
Make A Virtual Event Platform Work For You
Companies can build a great reputation and attract more employees if they build a great and reputable work environment and a working virtual venue platform. This type of infrastructure can make an already good physical workplace great.
Employers rely on great software programs such as virtual venue software programs. These give employers they need to create a successful virtual workplace and culture. This is important because it allows employees and employers to interact with each other as many times, as they want in any virtual environment.
Ways You Can Improve Your Remote Working Culture
Celebrate milestones
Remote employees work without social contact or opportunities for social interaction with others. That’s why celebrating certain accomplishments like work anniversaries, onboarding new employees, and landing a new client virtually is vital.
You can do this in the form of virtual parties that employees can participate in from their homes. You can mail goodies like cakes, candies, and cards to make the events more personalized, impactful, and meaningful.
Build virtual teams
The pandemic made team building a vital part of any organization’s work culture. This is especially true for organizations with virtual work environments. That’s why these organizations need to hold regular team-building meetings. Employees can participate in fun activities like yoga, online scavenger hunts, and bingo, to name a few.
These will make remote employees feel more valued. They will also enjoy working at your company. They can also be rewarded with paid time off or gift certificates to famous restaurants for their participation.
Have a buddy system
Create opportunities for people to interact with and befriend other remote or hybrid employees. You can also create a buddy system where employees check up on each other by phone call, text, email, and more.
Hold virtual happy hours
The happy hour has always been the favorite after-work gathering for employees. It can have the same effect when taken virtually. But fun at the office after hours doesn’t have to end there. Employees can also enjoy themselves at lunch groups and other outings.
To learn more about Premier Virtual and the solutions we offer such as virtual career fairs, visit https://premiervirtual.com/ or call 561-717-9717.
Digital Transformation is not a new thing. In fact, it began for many companies long ago as they realized the importance of data. By digitizing information, you can easily gather, sort, and create reports to analyze.
From the migration of paper to digital and written forms into online forms, digital transformation continued to expand. E-commerce has taken front and center as Covid-19 completely shut down in-person access to many businesses and events.
All around the globe, organizations have had to suddenly reevaluate their business plans. The need to create a memorable digital experience for your customers has never been greater. Having the luxury of delaying your digital transformation is gone and could mean falling behind your competitors while they fully embrace theirs.
This has never been truer in the world of recruiting and staffing. The evolution of hiring has taken us from classified ads in the newspaper to online job boards and ATS systems that filter and track applicants. The next stage that was accelerated by the pandemic is virtual hiring and hosting online job fairs or hiring events.
Not that this strategy is completely new, but the tools and platforms to do so have evolved tremendously. For example, on the Premier Virtual platform recruiters can host and attend a virtual job fair from the comfort of their desk. Applicants can participate from anywhere in the world. Recruiters can quickly glance at resumes, enter a chat, and invite job applicants into a video interview, in a matter of seconds.
The platform streamlines the screening process and reduces time to hire from an average of over 30 days, to under 7 days in many cases. That type of functionality was not possible before platforms like Premier Virtual when all companies had access to was MS Teams or Zoom.
Maybe the most crucial feature of remote hiring events is again the data that brings us back to digital transformation. At one time, resumes were collected on paper at these events and taken back to the office to sort. Now all resumes can be downloaded with a click of the button. Recruiters can keep notes during the event and download reports to follow up accordingly.
Businesses and organizations continue to recognize the importance of virtual hiring but have fluctuated from in-person to virtual based on the current climate. If there is a new variant, and covid cases spike, we see an immediate return to virtual. One recent Forbes article according to Burbio, a firm that monitors school data, more than 2,000 schools were prepared to close for at least one day, due to Covid-19 concerns for the first week of January. There are about 21 states with at least one school district closed or transitioning to remote learning this week. Reuters reports that thousands of U.S. schools have delayed this week’s scheduled to return to classrooms, following the holiday break, or switched to remote learning, as the Omicron variant spread.
As 2022 begins, many New Jersey school districts are going virtual to deal with the ongoing spike in Covid-19 cases and the staffing shortages it has caused. The data shows that the vast majority of these are poor, underserved children. This is a disaster for both the children and parents.
Just in the last week, we had 3 schools, Richland School District 2, District 5 Lexington and Wade County Public Schools that had to pivot from in-person job fairs to virtual. Because they have a license with Premier Virtual, they had the virtual job fair set up and ready to go in the event they would not be able to move forward with the in-person event, and that’s exactly what happened. The results were extremely positive with hundreds of applicants attending virtually and many new hires and connections were made at each event.
The stark reality is that Covid is here to stay. We must plan for a world that mitigates this challenge the best way possible, and integrating virtual hiring is a key component. There is no more time to wait or consider if virtual is right for you, it is right for everyone.
We see more and more candidates choosing to apply and attend virtually and looking for remote or virtual job opportunities. The better prepared your company or organization is to offer these options, the more talent you will attract and retain.
If you are still wondering if you need to add virtual to your hiring strategy, do not delay the decision any longer. The sooner you put a platform like Premier Virtual in place, the sooner you will set your company staffing needs up for success.
To schedule a free demo with Premier Virtual please visit our website.
As Covid-19 and the social distancing epidemic has entered a less severe stage, hiring is increasing, but the talent pool is still lagging.
A trend that has not changed is that virtual hiring events and career fairs continue to grow and establish themselves as the new norm as a hiring strategy for many organizations.
According to Handshake, a career networking platform aimed at college students, 80% of hiring will remain virtual for the foreseeable future. A Gartner poll of 334 human resource leaders recently found that 86% of organizations incorporate new virtual technology to interview candidates and onboard new hires. While virtual hiring existed before the pandemic, employers have seen COVID-19 as a means for accelerating virtual recruiting overall.
Despite the obvious advantages of pre-screening candidates from your desk, why are virtual hiring events so effective?
After powering more than 3,500 events, Premier Virtual has proven to its clients that virtual hiring events are much more efficient than in-person events. Being able to connect with candidates in our virtual platform increases the intention and maximizes the use of everyone’s time. Being able to communicate with multiple candidates simultaneously and invite the right prospects into a one-on-one video interview, accelerates the pre-screening process and increases the odds of finding the best candidate for the position.
Our mobile-friendly platform allows candidates to attend literally from anywhere in the world. As more jobs offer remote access, hosting a virtual hiring event positions your organization as forward-thinking, and candidates appreciate the flexibility; in fact, offering flexibility has quickly become the number on ‘perk’ your company can offer.
The physical cost-reducing benefits are a big win for many companies. The cost associated with venue or travel becomes $0, plus the reduction in travel time often increases productivity.
Job seekers that have had the experience of waiting in long lines to speak to an employer love the ability to avoid all lines in a virtual event. Now they simply register, log in, and go directly to the employer’s booth they are interested in. On our platform, they can research the company, view all the job openings, and enter into a chat in a matter of seconds. If the employer wants to know you better, they can invite you into a video interview right then and there! We’ve seen job offers made and accepted on the spot!
A recent event for Spokane Workforce, which is traditionally held in person, was moved to virtual instead. The director Mandy obtained 81 organizations and 387 attendees for this event with almost perfect attendance. There were also 272 resume submissions. It’s why we like to say that ‘Hiring Happens Here’. Achieving these results in an in-person event is nearly impossible to recreate right now, and with this kind of success, why would you?
As Mandy tells us, candidates could easily register, log in, and ‘move about’ the event freely with no concerns about their safety or social distancing. They could engage with employers, learn more about the openings and quickly enter into chats or video interviews. The employers were thrilled with the results, many of which attended a virtual hiring event for the first time.
The Premier Virtual platform includes a dedicated Success Team to ensure your event runs as smoothly as possible. Your company is trained on the platform and best practices to host and market your event from day one. Premier virtual also offers live training for employers attending and a complete training video library. It’s all there in case you need it, but the platform is so easy to use and intuitive it only takes a few minutes to become a pro.
The results that we’ve seen from powering this many job fairs prove there is no need to go back to in-person only. Some of our clients offer hybrid events that offer in-person access and leave the virtual door open for everyone else who prefers the convenience and efficiency of attending online.
No matter the option, it’s clear that virtual hiring events and career fairs are the new norm, and if your company wants to remain competitive in the job market, you need to add this tool to your hiring strategy today.
For more information or to schedule a free demo, visit PremierVirtual.com.
Premier Virtual is, and with its future-focused technology, its team plans to lead the charge.
Talking in-person or virtual. Which one do you want to do? There’s no need to choose one when you can do both.
Why? Because the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.
Future-focused technology company Premier Virtual supports the push for hybrid events, meaning, in-person events should also incorporate a virtual platform for the best of both worlds.
Premier Virtual recently executed a case study to see how many people would show up for an in-person versus virtual hiring event at South Florida Tech Hub.
There were less than 100 in-person attendees, but there were more than 500 virtual attendees. By offering both options, they were able to expand their candidate pool and employers were able to meet candidates in person and on the virtual platform.
The benefits don’t end there. Choosing a hybrid route when it comes to the hiring process prevents ATS systems from weeding out qualified candidates.
A recent Harvard Business report revealed that ATS, which is an applicant tracking system, is responsible for blocking or disqualifying many qualified applicants. How?
By ranking relevant keywords, skills, degrees, credentials, responsibilities, and other qualities that indicate to a hiring manager or recruiter that the applicant is qualified for the position. This becomes an issue because some applicants can get lost in the ample applications that are coming through the system.
A hybrid option resolves these issues by allowing hiring managers to take matters into their own hands. They can meet candidates in what Premier Virtual calls a “virtual hiring room.”
With the company’s technology, recruiters are able to schedule an ‘open-house on set days and times where candidates can meet and chat with recruiters. If there is a fit, the recruiter can enter into a pre-screening interview, and then decide if the candidate should be scheduled for a more formal interview.
Given the circumstances of the past two years, we can no longer solely rely on in-person hiring career fairs and events. Virtual hiring is the future, and companies should start preparing for it.
Choose Premier Virtual for Online Hiring Events
Premier Virtual fosters innovation and strives to provide solutions to complex virtual problems. Through building relationships based on integrity, trust, honesty, transparency, and teamwork, the tech-forward company always gets the job done. If your company would like to host a virtual hiring event, contact Premier Virtual today.
Yes, the workforce is slowly recovering from the 10.0 magnitude earthquake that it suffered in March of 2020. To put things into perspective Florida’s unemployment rate had dropped to 2.8 percent in January and February 2020, which, together with November 2019, became the lowest recorded unemployment rate since the series began in 1976.
With the onset of the Coronavirus outbreak, the unemployment rate spiked to 13.8 percent in April 2020, handily surpassing the prior peak rate of 11.3 percent experienced in January 2010 during the Great Recession. The change was breathtaking. Over the space of two months, the unemployment rate shifted from a near 50‐year low to a near 50‐year high.
Today, the new unemployment report (March 16th, 2021) states that Florida has dropped back down to a 4.8%. The Sun-Sentinel reports that there were still 482,000 Floridians who remained jobless out of a workforce of slightly under 10.1 million, the state Department of Economic Opportunity said Monday.
Economic development promoters made a point of noting that the state rate is now below the U.S. jobless figure of 6.3% for January. While those are all great numbers to report, it might worry hiring managers and companies that have open positions and are struggling to find qualified candidates.
That’s why the companies that quickly implemented a virtual hiring event strategy were able to meet their staffing needs. Virtual events increase the job candidate pool, make your company more competitive and relevant, and allow you to build relationships that can strengthen your potential candidate ‘bench’.
The Hiring Lessons we Learned from COVID
Virtual is the ‘New-Normal’
There are a lot of lessons and some that we are still learning. A few of them stand out over the rest. First and foremost, COVID accelerated the pace at which companies turned to virtual or remote hiring by 3 to 5 years. The lesson is, we need to be as prepared as possible and have back-up or contingency plans in place because this was not the first disruption and it won’t be the last.
Let’s face it, without a Pandemic, the vast majority of us would have been complacent with the status quo, hosting and traveling to in-person job fairs. COVID disrupted that severely and new options had to be embraced because doing nothing was not an option.
Besides the threat of ‘social distancing disrupting the workforce, the truth is everything continues to migrate more and more online. Just as retail will never be the same, and foot traffic to retailers will continue to decline, hiring will never be the same. Virtual hiring events have been embraced by everyone who has participated in an event, and for those who haven’t, it’s just a matter of time.
If the U.S. business owner has proven to be anything, it’s resilient, and resilience often requires the ability to quickly pivot. The schools, companies, and organizations that pivoted quickly and adopted virtual hiring events early in the Pandemic have proven how much more efficient, effective, and ultimately successful it has proven to be.
The Only Constant is Change
The second lesson is one you’ve heard before; the only constant is change. We learned that just about everyone prefers to apply online, rather than wait in-line. Virtual hiring is the evolution of hiring, the next step, and clearly the better option. It made it much easier for organizations to hire more efficiently and effectively, and for job-seekers to attend and get hired! Although many were reluctant at first, one step into the virtual lobby, and everything changed!
These events mirror in-person events, and attendees can quickly see exactly what is being offered, and how to find what they are looking for. Being able to chat or even video-interview on the spot for a job that they are interested in is a total game-changer. Ask any job-seeker that attended a virtual job fair, and the large majority will tell you that it was highly productive.
The same holds for the hiring companies that can get a much better feel for a candidate than they can from reading a resume on Indeed. The additional real-time engagement allows candidates and recruiters to ask more questions and rate candidates based on their responses.
The post-event reporting allows recruiters to gather much more information from a virtual event than they ever could during in-person events. This allows for better follow-up and a higher likelihood to make an offer to the right candidate, rather than the only candidate.
We’ve seen the difference in our own hiring efforts. An ad on Indeed will get you resumes, but that’s just the very beginning of the process if you’re lucky enough to receive one from a qualified candidate. In our last job posting, we received zero resumes, and it was an entry-level position.
On the contrary, a recent statewide job fair that the Premier Virtual platform powered in Virginia had 350 hiring companies, and over 15,000 registered job-seekers. The event was hosted by the workforce board of Virginia, Virginia CareerWorks. It shattered every previous record for a career fair and also taught us another valuable lesson.
This statewide career fair would have been impossible if not for the virtual platform. Could you imagine choosing a location in Virginia, where 350 companies would travel to set up and 15,000 job seekers would travel to attend? The logistics and expenses and time to plan would be so massive, it would most likely be impossible to pull off in a timely manner, not to mention the unmanageable lines that 15,000 job seekers would have to stand on.
So, back to our current 4.8% unemployment rate, it’s great if your company is fully staffed, but what company really is? Improving our company means having the best people possible, which requires different strategies in and of itself, like developing a bench.
But if you think you can rely simply on a job board like Recruiter or Indeed, then you’re not putting yourself in the best position to succeed. Job candidates now want to know as much about you, as you do about them, and they don’t want to schedule an interview and travel to your office to do so. They would much rather get that all done online, during your virtual career fair, from the comfort of their home (or car or coffee shop).
It saves everyone time and wasted energy if the job or job-seeker was not a good fit in the first place. It also gives your company more accessible to the working job-seeker, than a company that does not offer virtual job fairs. Now that both the job seeker and hiring manager have fully embraced these virtual events, there is no going back, and why should you. Virtual or remote hiring is simply a better way to hire.
Finally, I’d like to leave you with one thought. If you do plan on turning to in-person events, make sure to offer a ‘hybrid’ option. This allows any candidate or employer that cannot or chooses not to make it in person, an opportunity to still participate without the need for more space or travel expenses.
This is the evolution of hiring, and once you integrate it into your hiring strategy, you’ll never go back to in-person only job fairs and hiring events. If your company, school, or organization is looking for a virtual hiring event platform option, please contact us for a free demo and see how Premier Virtual is setting the standard in our industry.
We are proud to have been selected by Select Software Reviews as on of the top Virtual Career Fair Platforms on the market!
This award comes after less than 1-year since we powered our first virtual hiring event. We have now powered over 1,200 events, making it possible to connect nearly 15,000 employers with 150,000 registered jog-seekers.
Here we are, basically a year into the Covid-19 pandemic and we are starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel. Several vaccines have been rolled out, and the monumental effort of getting America vaccinated is underway.
As I write this in Spring of 2021, we have begun to see slight declines in the infection rate, and hospitalizations are coming down. Best of all the death rate is also coming down, although we recently surpassed the morbid milestone of 500,000 deaths in America. However, there are reports of 20 states experiencing increases and the talks of a possible fourth spike in cases.
One thing is certain, Covid-19 was a virtual technology accelerant. From one day to the next the American workforce was forced to work from home, and turning to virtual is what made it possible. Without a pandemic like COVID-19, corporate America would likely have continued to do business the same old way, and just inch along the technology curve.
Now, we have giant corporations such as Google and Twitter telling their workforce, they never have to return to the office. I’ve seen many of my colleagues do the same, and now the ‘new normal is that when it comes to office work, most of us are just as capable to be as productive or even more so, working from home or remotely.
The same has happened in the career fair space. What was once an in-person-only event, has migrated to virtual events and the results have been more than impressive.
A recent statewide virtual job fair in Virginia had 350 employers who were able to fill critical open positions from over 15,000 registered job-seekers! Not only is this an amazing accomplishment, but it’s something that could have never happened in person. Think about it, in a state like Virginia would it be possible to choose one central location, and have 350 companies set up booths to meet and greet over 15,000 job seekers. Not to mention the weather was cold with terrible travel conditions!
So now what? If we return to a new-normal post-COVID-19, are we going back to an in-person career fair and abandoning the virtual career fair model?
The answer is yes and no! We believe a hybrid model that offers both is the best strategy moving forward. Just ask anyone that has hosted or participated in a virtual career fair, as an employer or a candidate. They will tell you that the virtual event was amazing, easy to navigate, and most of all, extremely efficient and effective. Here is some of the feedback we are hearing from job-seekers:
• “This was a great experience! I was able to search for openings, have my resume viewed, and communicate just with the employers I was interested in, all without leaving my desk. The idea of a virtual career fair takes the pressure off of the job seeker and employer.”
• “The career fair was super easy to navigate. I quickly saw a few employers and job opportunities that I liked and was able to apply for. The recruiter was right in the room with me and after chatting a bit, we did a quick video interview, before I knew it, I had an offer to intern.”
• “Our generation has been chatting, texting, anything of that nature for our entire lives. Being part of a virtual job fair is a natural extension of the way we are used to communicating and doing things. I liked it, and I had a few recruiters contact me right away, and one made me a job offer!”
We know that hiring managers, workforce development boards, chambers of commerce, the military, tech organizations, and large corporations all over America have also had success well beyond their expectations, and they all agree that remote hiring will remain a vital part of their recruitment strategy going forward.
So, the numbers prove remote allows for unlimited participants on both the company side and job-seeker side, resulting in more quality hires. We also know that many people still want to offer the physical ‘meet-and-greet’ if and when it becomes viable.
With a virtual hiring platform like Premier Virtual, you don’t have to choose between the two. We make it easy to add a virtual option to your in-person event so that you can offer both options, and your organization can benefit from offering a hybrid event.
We are certain that the organizations that do, will have a competitive advantage over those who don’t. These organizations will be the beneficiaries of attracting top talent, by offering a hybrid option that will not limit their events to the local population, or to those who can physically attend the day of the in-person event.
To learn how you can create hybrid events, please visit www.PremierVirtual.com
There’s no doubt that Covid-19 accelerated the growth of virtual events by as much as 3 years. This is a rare phenomenon that happens when something outside of our control has such a drastic impact on events, the choice is to change (and change quickly) or go obsolete.
While we were growing steadily in 2020, after the lockdown in March our business increased 10-fold! Many schools, organizations, and corporations were forced to look for a virtual option for hiring events in order to meet their staffing demands and remain competitive in the marketplace.
A funny thing happened through all the chaos and uncertainty, something not many people would have predicted…we started to like it. First of all, even the most die-hard fans of in-person events and networking found virtual events to be quite enjoyable. The learning curve was not the ordeal many thought it would be, and the engagement and outcomes were for the most part, favorable.
As the year went on, virtual events went from being a necessary evil to a welcoming option and effective tool to get business and hiring done. In fact, it started to prove that in many ways it was better than in-person events.
Advantage number one is obviously productivity. No one has to leave their desk or home office, which means no travel time or travel-related expenses. These benefits also make virtual extremely efficient, as platforms offer many features that allow recruiters and job-seekers alike to find the exact information they’re looking for and act on it. All of this while keeping everyone safe from Covid-19.
Beyond the benefits of productivity and efficiency, virtual events have the ability to scale to any size and do not have the limitations that physical in-person events have. Participants can attend from anywhere in the world, and no one gets turned away due to over-crowded lobbies or sold out events.
As we near the end of the year, many companies have embraced virtual events and remote working to the point where it will remain the primary option going into 2021. In fact, many are planning accordingly to support and improve their virtual strategy, exploring how to create ‘hybrid’ events that offer both in-person and virtual in order to get the most out of each event.
Below are 6 steps from Yesler, which serve as a handy checklist as you plan for 2021.
1. Strategy: Analyze your market, current plans, and KPIs from past events. After that’s complete, look at the most beneficial activities and begin to think of how you might replicate them virtually. This could take time with your team to brainstorm or do some research to see how others are doing this. Keep your focus on the kinds of activities that have provided the most benefit and that align with your overall goals and integrated marketing approach. Resist activities that would be just for fun or that you can’t measure.
2. Infrastructure: Assess your ‘martech’ infrastructure and digital event management tools. The right martech infrastructure will help you run a successful virtual event from beginning to end and beyond to nurture, so you can get long-term value from your content. This means assessing not only your marketing automation and online meeting and classroom software, but the tools you will use to analyze the event when it’s over. And of course, it also means making sure you have the right-skilled staff to run it.
3. Operations: Consult with your marketing operations and automation teams early so they’re prepared to execute each event, deliver promotions seamlessly, and capture engagement data.
4. Promotion: Develop a targeted promotional plan for every virtual event, just as you would for any other event.
5. Digital experience: Create thoughtfully designed content and digital experiences to fully engage audiences. You can also use these assets to nurture prospects as part of an ongoing campaign.
6. Analytics: Make sure you have the right tools to manage the data you’ve captured and track leads after the event. As mentioned above, analytics tools need to be in place beforehand and set to measure your KPIs. They are a critical part of your overall strategy and pre-event setup. Use this data to measure your success and inform your strategy for future events.
Virtual events are not a fad or something that will go away when ‘things get back to normal’. Virtual is the modern way of hosting events, increasing productivity, and efficiency that will give your company a competitive advantage when executed properly. The companies that are future-focused and embrace this innovation will be far ahead of the curve in 2021 and best positioned to succeed in what has become the new normal.
Marketing Department – Premier Virtual, December 2020
Request Pricing
Request a Demo
Thank you for your interest in Premier Virtual! We will be in touch with you shortly!
