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Navigating the Unchartered Waters of Virtual Recruitment Events

By ANDREW HARPER

Last spring, our staff in the Career and Professional Development Office at St. Edward’s University decided we needed to offer more virtual recruiting options for employers and students to connect.  We had never hosted a virtual career fair and we were not quite where to start our planning.   We realized there were several sets of questions we had not yet answered:

• What defines an online or virtual online career fair
• What platform should we use?
• What equipment our office, students and employers would need (webcam, microphone)?
• How do we want students to experience this event and what types of engagement with employers would we allow (live video, chat functionality, etc.)?
• When would the fair be offered and for what length of time?
• How much would this event cost to host?

Within four weeks, a few frustrating technical difficulties, and less than $30 spent, our staff explored multiple software platforms and recruited six employers to coordinate the first ever Hilltopper Virtual Career Fair.   We were surprised with our results and the positive reception we received from both students and employers.

At the 2017 CEIA Conference in Denver, I will facilitate the speed session, Navigating the Unchartered Waters of Virtual Recruitment Events, where I will walk through the planning process that included evaluating software platforms, recruiting employers, marketing the fair to students and the actual facilitation of the fair.  In addition, attendees of my session will be encouraged to share their experiences with offering virtual recruiting options.  In the spirit of elevating our expertise with student and employer engagement, I look forward to discussing best practices using technology to enhance and expand on-campus recruiting on our campuses.

Author: Andrew Harper is the Manager of Employer Relations, Career and Professional Development at St. Edward’s University. He can be reached at andrewh@stedwards.edu.

Categorized in: Best Practices, Conference Session Preview

This post was written by rich@ceiainc.org