Just hosting a rock-solid virtual career fair isn’t enough; it’s an equal part of your game plan to have an outstanding follow-up strategy to continue competing for talent. With the pressure to acquire the best candidates at an all-time high, nurturing long term ties with your job seeker goes a long way to master hiring, and continue reeling in best prospects. This is why your job is not done even after the virtual career fair is over. The next stage of your hosting responsibilities is to cast a wide net demonstrating a compelling post-event follow up to connect with job seekers, and find ways for engagement to still thrive without a hiccup.
Step 1: Assess your new talent pool
A virtual career fair facilitates seamless data collection; the online platform captures pivotal attendee information during registration and tracks their event activity with precision to help measure ROI. This allows the hosting organization to review which industry, job types, employers, content and networking opportunities did the guests best avail to determine visitor’s preferences, in addition to overall satisfaction with the online event itself.
Step 2: Set up email campaigns
With an average 30-50% of registered job seekers converting to actual visitors, hosts must acknowledge their efforts and time dedicated towards attending the virtual career fair. This can be as simple as sending out “thank you” mailers, and sharing key highlights or statistics from the event proving its success (a dedicated mailer for exhibitors is also strongly encouraged).
For the registered attendees that were a no show, this is still a chance to use your extended digital footprint to your advantage. We recommend kicking off a targeted reminder email campaign mentioning that the live event maybe over, however webinar replays on demand, and a highly resourceful content library are still available for job seeker utilization. Bonus Tip: Another alternative can be adding new content to complement the existing variety uploaded on the platform, this will incentivize both old and new visitors to log in and get a taste of the virtual career fair resources they may have missed out on.
Step 3: Start shortlisting candidates
Get your recruitment plans up and running by shortlisting candidates promising highest potential, sharing assessments or inviting top prospects to for an interview. Use an ATS to search through resumes, or use the in-built filters built in to your virtual career platform- the goal here is to be as efficient with follow ups as possible. The sooner you connect with your talent to keep the post virtual career fair momentum in full swing, the higher the likelihood of being able to exercise diligent candidate selection as an employer.
Step 4: Check chat for unanswered questions
Your exhibitors and recruiters will be provided chat logs to keep track of all communications, interactions and their context. This is a good time to take a step back and ensure that all questions were answered with clarity during Q&A and announced chat schedules so that no job seeker was accidentally overlooked. The tiniest attention to detail matters when it comes to making or breaking the event experience for the audience. Thus, we emphasize always going the extra mile to confirm special focus on ensuring a memorable candidate experience.
Step 5: Go social with post event marketing
Just because the virtual career fair is over, it does not mean that you can stop raving about your efforts. Highlight and share the event highlights on your social media channels, and even add employer testimonials as an added flair. 
Step 6: Collect feedback
Driving continuous improvement in your virtual career fair strategy should be an objective for all hosts to pursue. Gathering employer and attendee feedback via emailed surveys within 1-2 weeks is a smart way to initiate dialogue, meanwhile collecting ideas to tweak your future event strategy.
Conclusion
Providing exceptional opportunities to connect with employers and job seekers, collecting virtual career fair feedback and building sustainable ties should be a top priority for organizations. Spearheading engagement, communication, and the ability to showcase recruitment results achieved- sharing event performance on social media platforms and through email campaigns will prove your proficiency at helping businesses in overcoming talent shortages. Delivering great hires, building a reputation of drawing capable talent is an achievement you should be proud of. Keep the momentum alive and extend the impact of your digital footprint to promote your resources and continue building candidate pools- all capabilities of a great post event follow up strategy waiting to be unlocked.
Want to learn more about Virtual Career Fairs? Read “The Ultimate Guide to Virtual Career Fairs”.
