Employers commonly face the problem of standing out among the crowd of organizations competing for candidates at virtual job fairs. Companies with limited brand awareness will struggle more to attract candidates as opposed to employers with recognizable corporate brands. In this article, we will discuss different things you can do to stand out as a virtual job fair exhibitor that leads to more conversations with potential job candidates and better brand awareness.
Five Ways To Stand Out
You want to get the most possible value out of any virtual event you attend. During the event, you want to focus all of your attention on connecting with candidates. Here are five things you can do to stand out during the event.
1. Be goal-oriented
First things first, discuss the purpose of exhibiting at the event with your team. Are you attending the event to screen potential candidates or to create brand awareness for future employment opportunities? Aligning on your primary goal ensures everyone is on the same page, and allows you to prepare to achieve your goal. Even if you are a 1-person-team, identifying your goal is a critical first step, as it will be the foundation that you use to make other decisions about how to best participate in the hiring event.
2. Prepare appealing visuals
Visuals play an important role in establishing an attendee’s first impression of your booth and your organization. Potential candidates learn about your company through the visuals before choosing to speak with a representative. Make sure your visuals include information the candidates want to know about, such as the company culture, what kind of business you are in, and if you are hiring right now. Put yourself in an attendee’s shoes. What would you want to know? Assume they know nothing or very little about your company. What information would paint the right picture of who you are to someone learning about your organization for the first time? At the same time, you want to keep a balance between the information you include in your visuals versus the exclusive information attendees gain when they speak to a representative. This makes sure that attendees speak with a representative, rather than looking at the visuals only.
3. Deliver an elevator pitch
An “elevator pitch” is a practiced and very short (under 30-second) summary of the main message you want to tell attendees. Be passionate and energetic in your elevator pitch. You want to tell the attendee about your company in a quick and articulate manner that helps set the conversation. By giving the attendee more context about your organization and what you do will allow them to ask specific questions and learn about the different opportunities.
4. Create incentives to promote engagement
It helps to have an incentive that promotes attendee engagement. Align your incentive with your goal for exhibiting at the event. The information you request from the attendee before you give something away needs to be the same information you need to support your goal for exhibiting at the job fair. At in-person events, as an attendee if you see a booth giving out a cool mug, you might walk around looking for that booth yourself. At a virtual job fair the attendees won’t see the swag other attendees received. You can align giving out swag with incentivizing attendees to help promote your booth. Ask them to tweet to visit your booth with the event hashtag in exchange for a better giveaway, or an extra entry in a draw. And keep in mind that your swag needs to be something you can give them virtually. It could be a chance to win a subscription to a digital service, or a commitment to donate to plant a tree for everyone who enters their name in a digital form and tweets about your booth.
5. Follow-up with candidates quickly post-event
It is likely that the candidates you want to follow up with have also caught the attention of other employers. You want to make sure that you follow up with them as soon as possible after the event with next steps. Show them how enthusiastic you are to connect with them. The biggest mistake you can make is to let a warm candidate lead go cold by acting slowly after the event.
Final Thoughts
Attending a virtual hiring event as a job fair exhibitor can be daunting, but it’s a great way to interact with different types of candidates. This allows you to speak with promising candidates as opposed to meeting them through their resumes, where they might slip through the cracks in the conventional screening process. There are always different things you can try to spice up the experience for you and the candidates. Try different ideas and see what works best for you and your team. Creating a well-organized game plan and following up quickly with interested candidates are a couple of steps that will on their own put you miles ahead of most companies. Attendees will pick up on your energy, so no matter what you do, have fun while you’re doing it!
Ready to put these tips to use and become a success virtual job fair exhibitor? Get started quickly and easily with a free trial of Hellohire.