How to Host A Virtual Career Fair in 11 Easy Steps

There’s a lot involved in hosting a successful virtual career fair and you want to get it right the first time. That’s why we’re going to take you through 10 easy steps to hosting a successful virtual career fair!

At Remo, we know how important it is for your company exhibitors and candidates to interact with each other, so you can offer an experience that is engaging and feels just like a real-life event. Here’s how:

1. Set your budget

First, every event planner needs to set their budget accordingly. Costs will vary and depend on different factors including the following:

• Event coverage (regional or global)
• How many individual events are being hosted
• The technology and features required
• Other key requirements or features.

On the whole, though, hosting a virtual career fair can cost considerably less than a physical one - which good news! After you’ve decided on your budget, you can start looking into software providers.

2. Choose your technology

Next, you need to choose software for your event that maximizes engagement, is fun and easy to use, fully customizable and visually compelling. You need your event to be easily accessible and memorable for the right reasons, so choosing technology that anyone can use is critical. Before hosting your virtual career fair, make a list of the features and requirements you need from your software and ensure it ticks all your boxes.

Your attendees need to have the ability to have individual conversations at each booth but also have the ability to move around freely to the next. You’ll want to spend some time testing the software and trying it out before the day, so look for providers who offer free trials. (You can sign up for a Remo free trial today!)

3. Planning and strategy

Planning and strategy is critical to the success of hosting a virtual career fair. It’s important to cover the following:

• Set a date: When deciding on a date for your event, think about when would achieve the best turnout. Also, make sure you allow yourself enough time to plan the event - 2-3 months minimum
• Content is king: Plan and schedule time to create your content such as imagery, videos and any written content needed 
• Event scope: Decide on how many companies you wish to participate and how many candidates you are aiming for
• Promotion: Deciding how best to market your event to your audiences will be key to its success
• Set goals: It’s important to set your event goals upfront, such as attendance and income.

4. Marketing your virtual career fair

The success of hosting a virtual career fair relies heavily on the right marketing! You can’t hold an event if nobody knows about it, so good marketing and communication is critical. You’ll need to keep the lines of communication open with your attendees so they know what’s happening when and what’s expected of them. Luckily for you, we have put together our top 10 ways to promote your virtual event so you don’t have to figure this out by yourself!

5. Customization

When hosting a virtual career fair, you want it to feel just like an in-person event. You’ll want to fully brand and customize it so it looks professional, as well as being valuable to exhibitors and candidates. Provide useful information for exhibitors and candidates, whilst also making it as visually compelling as possible too.

This is where your choice of technology really comes to the fore! From the theme, branding, imagery and custom floor plans, you want it all! If you’re looking for some inspiration or ideas, check out our tutorials and examples of virtual events. You can also check out our Youtube channel for more examples and video tutorials.

6. Staffing your event

Having the right team beside you is one of the most important things when hosting a virtual career fair. It’s key to make sure that you have the right amount of staff on hand, as well as enough knowledgeable hiring managers / recruiters to help answer any questions your candidates have.

7. Provide must-have information

Candidates need all the information about each company at their fingertips, so here is a list of must-have items when hosting your virtual career fair, which should be downloadable:

• Map of locations 
• Open job opportunities list
• Company benefits information 
• Contact information for follow up
• Current news and stock information
• Corporate videos.

8. Audience engagement

You’ll need to engage with candidates and companies before, but particularly while you are hosting your virtual career fair. Just as you would at a real-life event, you may want to make announcements and incorporate presentations too. To make attendees immediately feel welcome, you can show a welcome video to inform them about what to expect at your event and highlight any information they need to know.

Think about how you want companies and candidates to interact during the event, which can be achieved by them moving freely around the event, as well as through chat, polls and surveys.

9. Collect contact details

It is critical that you collate the contact details of candidates at your event when hosting a virtual career fair, but also make sure you have the right contact information for companies too. You’ll need these so that you can complete the follow up step, which allows you to measure the success of your event.

10. Measuring success of your virtual career fair

After your fair, you need to measure its success. To do this, you need to revisit the goals you set out when planning for your event and measure your KPIs. Not sure how best to measure your KPIs after hosting your virtual career fair? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered - check out our article on the top 10 most important KPIs to measure the success of your virtual event.

11. Follow-up

Don’t forget the follow up! This is a really important step so you can make any improvements for the next time you’re hosting a virtual career fair. You should follow up with candidates and your company exhibitors to make sure everyone achieved what they needed to from your event. Use the contact details that recruiters gathered to follow up with potential candidates who haven’t applied for a role yet. It's a good idea to track candidates who moved on to the next step in the hiring process as that also helps you to measure the overall success of your event. Run a poll or survey to all attendees to see what they thought went well and what could have been improved. If you have any questions about Remo’s video conferencing software and how you can use it, check out our FAQs. Find out more about Remo by having a guided tour or check us out on LinkedIn.