Virtual Job Fair Platforms: Today's Recruitment Change Agents

Kim J Scholes, Director of Human Resources at Aldridge Pite

The last time I discussed a topic on the New Normal in today’s workforce, I focused on employment branding, which is now a very real cornerstoneof your overall recruiting strategy. Today I will share my insights on what I believe is also an obligatory ingredient of successful talent acquisition in this ‘virtual workscape.’ Given the maxim inherent to LinkedIn’s Global Talent Trends 2022 report, Employees want flexibility in where, when, and how they work. And they’re more than willing to head out the door if their organization isn’t providing it.What better way to market this critical element in the Employee Life Cycle than by exemplifying it at its very onset?

Sounding the Alarm

Let’s say you received a call from your operations leaders at the tail-end of the pandemic that instructed you to hire innumerable employees…in two weeks…during the holiday season …at a point when the labor market was at its most constricted in more than half a century? Hopefully, you’ve already stayed abreast of trends, so you don’t immediately suffer a nervous breakdown.  I myself had been especially observant of one trend throughout the pandemic, just in case the economy abruptly relaxed its choke hold.

Silicon Shifts

To provide some perspective –my professional networking groups provide speakers with presentations on all sorts of topics, but one of them intrigued me. A leading Silicon Valley organization’s talent executive explained how they’d had to resort to conducting virtual job fairs to acquire people en masse during the forced workplace shutters in the state, which was particularly challenging for them because the technology was experiencing seismic demand during this period.  I decided to conduct some research on these platforms. While most of them appeared to be rather glorified versions of virtual event systems, a few of them were brilliantly conspicuous.  They were Brazen, vFairs, Hallo, Handshake, Hopin, and a few others.  As a tenured subscriber of Brazen communications, I settled on that platform.  This system did not disappoint me.  We were able to easily contract with them at a reasonable rate for a fixed term which included four job fairs per year. They complemented that arrangement with dedicated customer support, virtual recorded and live training, and communications planning. For an extra fee, they could also provide us with advertising assistance (they possess a lot of subscribers).

“Let’s continue to capitalize on ways we can help employees achieve higher levels of productivity and stay connected through these more advanced methodologies that mirror our newfound avatar cultures!”

Brazen Belfries

These very cooperative representatives helped us create a branded job fair, complete with tailored job booths, multiple simultaneous interview slots during a 3-hour timespan for numerous hiring managers across several time zones within our national footprint.  They even debriefed the team with a dashboard of analytics and reporting in order to make the next event even more stellar. Of course, you must embrace this speed dating approach to hiring remote workers.  This technique is not for the faint of heart; it’s progressive. Take it all with a dose of caution by remembering that your applicants will get beneath the surface when it comes to talking about company culture, according to Fast Company and Harvard Business Review.  Has interviewing and working remotely improved your company culture or brought people closer together? Despite obvious disadvantages to this method, we were able to interview a significant number of people in a short amount of time for a diverse variety of professional and support positions throughout our organization. While we may not have hired them immediately, we could certainly use those initial interviews to identify candidates for future interviews and selections, ultimately achieving our staffing requirements in a decidedly condensed period of time. HR was not only at the cusp of an innovative hiring mechanism, but its team actually enjoyed the process and the recognition as the heroes of this critical operations ramp-up. Thank you, thank you very much.

Epiphanies

According to McKinsey, a hybrid work model in which part of the workforce works outside of the traditional office for at least part of the time is vital to future productivity. These ideas are key to your survival in this Era of Humanity, this new world order of seamless work/life.  I believe we’ve all rapidly realized that we can achieve goals without sitting next to our colleagues for eight or so hours a day.  Employers cannot make it difficult for talent to be able to add value to their profession without sacrificing their commitments to family and community manifested in traditional brick-and-mortar cultures.  For those that change by fostering connectivity through virtual platforms that start in the talent acquisition phase, only they will provide the momentum to advance their remote workforce of the future.  Let’s continue to capitalize on ways we can help employees achieve higher levels of productivity and stay connected through these more advancedmethodologies that mirror our newfound avatar cultures! Beam me up, Scottie. 

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