CEO and Strategic Recruitment Advisor at VidCruiter, the new standard for worldwide online hiring.
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If you’re an HR professional who’s building your talent pipeline, you may be considering hosting your own virtual career fair as a way to attract job applicants. Virtual career events (sometimes called online job fairs) offer a safe and effective approach to recruitment, especially for dispersed hiring teams. With so much of our workdays moving behind screens, some may try to argue that we risk losing human connection. Thankfully, that doesn’t need to be the case.
Hosting Virtual Hiring Events — Without Compromising On Personal Touch
I’ve got good news: virtual job fairs don’t need to feel impersonal. Yes, they take place online, but that doesn’t mean they need to feel foreign or intimidating for job seekers. Flip your thinking so that you’re putting yourself in applicants’ shoes, and try to make the experience as straightforward and accessible as possible.
Here are some tips to improve the candidate experience when hosting an online hiring event:
1. Remember: The look, feel and flow of the event is entirely up to your organization. Virtual spaces can be humanized to mirror a real-world experience. For example, you could make the virtual waiting room look like the lobby of your office space, so the interview feels more familiar to candidates.
2. Make your online hiring event a memorable one by highlighting actual people within your organization. You could embed videos of employees explaining why they love their job to encourage others to apply. This can help humanize the employer brand and illustrate why you’re an employer of choice.
3. Let applicants interview whenever they’d like with a recorded video interview option. That way, if an applicant is an early bird, they can record answers to interview questions in the quiet morning hours when they’re most alert. If they’re a night owl, they can do the interview after others in their household have gone to sleep so they can focus. That’s real life, and candidates gravitate toward flexible, accommodating employers.
4. To add more engagement in one-way interviews, record a video where you introduce yourself and ask questions via video rather than written questions. It doesn’t need to be high-production either; in fact, recording a video of yourself on a cell phone or webcam, like job applicants will be doing, can help candidates feel less intimidated. Mirror what you’re asking job applicants to do and lead by example.
5. As part of your virtual career fair, give applicants the freedom to choose whatever type of interview they’d prefer. Allow them to choose a video interview with recruiters safely from a distance, an on-demand video interview on their own time or an in-person meeting at a mutually convenient time outside the online job fair. When candidates can choose what format works best for them, it increases the likelihood they’ll take the leap and actually complete an application. It shows you value job applicants’ time and preferences as much as your own, empathizing with people’s busy schedules and helping them put their best foot forward.
6. Physical and geographical barriers can interfere with a positive candidate experience. Level the playing field by making the interviewing experience accessible for more applicants and sympathizing with the very human reality of mobility issues. Virtual events remove challenges associated with travel and mobility, making them perfect for those looking to relocate or work remotely. They can accommodate most people with physical limitations, opening doors to new talent and helping applicants feel welcome early in the process. Consider adding interactive maps that allow people to choose one or more location(s) where they’d be open to working, so job hunters can secure work more quickly.
7. Online hiring events are also a way to connect with underrepresented talent who too often experience unfair hiring bias. You can target and tailor online hiring events to reach geographical areas with lots of available talent. Zero in on niche populations and skill sets to help diversify your workforce so that it’s more representative of the human race as a whole.
8. Finally, there are ways to humanize your online hiring events that can be done entirely behind the scenes. You can evaluate candidates more ethically and equally by standardizing certain elements such as structured interview questions and rating guides. This unified structure can help minimize hiring bias and align decision-makers, allowing you to fast-track hiring consensus fairly.
Changing Perspectives About Online Job Fairs
There used to be more of a stigma against online job fairs from job seekers and recruiters alike. Recent events have helped change the misconception that people must interview in-person to properly get a sense of job fit. Now, people are much less likely to say, “Maybe I’d have had a better chance in-person,” because the last year has proven that’s just not the case.
Recruiters can hire competent people using entirely digital tools, and applicants can present themselves just as professionally in video interviews as they could in-person. Just because technology can help hiring teams with their recruiting doesn’t mean it’s removing the human element of human resources. As you rebuild the workforces of the future, don’t lose sight of that important distinction.
Projecting a welcoming employer brand and crafting a positive candidate experience is so important to motivating talent — especially top talent who know their stuff — to apply to work for you. So, make the process as easy and as human as possible! Whether you’re finding great hires in-person or online, at the end of the workday, we’re all still people looking to connect with other people for a job well done.
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