Virtual Career Fair - a new normal for recruitment
Well!
Who hasn’t been impacted by the pandemic that the world is witnessing currently?
Everyone, in one way or the other, has faced the wrath of the pandemic who we are all expecting to end right from the day since we have gotten to know the reality of it, but on a lighter note, we are almost at the first anniversary of the pandemic and still, the light of solution is far.
Initially, we all tried to stay stuck to our phones and laptop, trying to comprehend what is happening outside, how to tackle it and when exactly would it be over. While all those ‘Whats, Hows and Whens’ stay unanswered until now, the world has come ahead and figured out ‘The New Normal’.
Needless to say, ‘The New Normal’ is different for everyone. For restaurants and online shopping apps, it is contactless delivery and digital payment; for schools and universities, it is online classes; for coaches, it is webinars; for IT industry, it is work from home and the list is endless.
But, what about the recruitment structure?
The entire system of hiring and recruitment, for a while, went for a toss and nobody had a clue as to what exactly would happen about hiring. Thankfully, the chaos didn’t last very long!
The world witnessed one of its kind developments in its ‘New Normal’ with ‘VIRTUAL RECRUITMENT’ with Virtual Job fairs and Virtual career fairs.
Before we get into the benefits of Virtual job fairs and Virtual career fairs, let’s get to understand what exactly Virtual Recruitment is and how the world can extract the maximum benefit out of it.
VIRTUAL JOB FAIR
Virtual job fair or an online job fair, as a layman would call it, is basically, an online way of doing the traditional job fair. In order to conduct Virtual job fairs, there are specific websites through which recruitment is conducted allowing the job seekers and the employers to meet, discuss and finalize the entire process. Similar to a traditional job fair, a virtual job fair also happens at a specific time, on a specific day and has rather specific terms related to it. Given the current situation where social distancing has to be maintained all the time, virtual job fairs have become extremely popular and are considered to be the future of the recruitment industry.
BENEFITS OF VIRTUAL JOB FAIR
Virtual Job Fair, though has come in light post the situation became such, but the world has come to realize that this is something that is here to stay and in fact, certain studies have suggested that it would have been great if the world would have adapted to this even before the pandemic, given to the advantages it carries.
Anyway!
Like they say,
“The pandemic taught us what meetings could have been calls.”
Jokes aside, let’s dive into the major benefits of Virtual Job fairs:
1. High attendance:
Since, a virtual job fair is supposed to be registered and attended online; there are fair chances that the attendance in an online job fair would be higher than the traditional job fair. Since, there is no restraint on the location and attendance number, the attendance usually is expected to go higher in an online job fair than the one conducted offline and thus, there are better opportunities as well.
2. Improved filtration:
A virtual job fair welcomes employers and potential employees from all around the world, and therefore there usually, is more filtration in the beginning in order to make sure that the most efficient ones reach the next stages. Given to this, during an online job fair, the target potential employers are expected to be of better qualification and potential depending upon their initial check which could be based on resume and other ways like a recorded introduction and self-detailing.
3. Strong employer branding:
A virtual job fair provides the employers with personalized booths, branding and style of an event virtually, which means that the brand gets to have a better visibility and a rather powerful image amongst the potential employers. Special tabs are available on the booths in order to share content, documents, details on vacancies etc. This helps the brands create a distinct identity of their own in the recruitment market.
4. Cost-friendly:
This is not even a shocker. There are no location restraints, no travel involved, no physical preparation needed and given to many more reasons like this, a virtual job fair is way more cost effective than a traditional job fair can ever be. An online job fair saves a good fortune for both the employer and the job seeker and in turn, gives them way more opportunities.
5. Reduced paperwork:
A virtual job fair takes everything to a digital platform which makes it convenient for both employer and the job seeker by letting them avoid the unnecessary paperwork that goes in when one participates in a traditional job fair. Everything is at the distance of a click and E-mails can be sent for every kind of important information that needs to be exchanged during an online job fair. The data storage that happens in a traditional job fair brings with it the hassle of a lot of paperwork, which sure can be avoided in a virtual job fair by storing the data in a digital manner. Now that you are versed with what exactly is a virtual job fair and what benefits does it bring with it, let’s throw light on how one can exactly derive maximum benefit out of an online job fair. As a potential employee, there is some Homework that you must do in order to ensure that the virtual job fair brings out the most for you: