Introduction
When hosting a virtual career fair, you have various options to choose from. That said, since every virtual career fair platform comes with its own unique features, the task of choosing a platform isn’t exactly a cut-and-dried process.
Some platforms may have features that are completely out of the scope of your event needs. Others may have what you need but are too cost or time prohibitive.
Ultimately, when evaluating the various platforms out there, it’s important that you find the right fit and also account for potential issues ahead of time to ensure that your virtual career fair stakeholders come away happy from the event.
At Eventus.io, we’ve worked with career fair coordinators around the world to help evaluate and implement virtual career fairs. We’ve seen all types of needs and use cases in the virtual space.
As such, to make your evaluations less daunting, we’ll go through the following top 6 considerations that we think you should consider when looking at the various virtual career fair platforms available:
- Event Scope
- Communication Medium
- Ease of Use
- Time Zone Accommodation
- Cost
- Timeline
Event Scope
Different virtual career fair platforms oftentimes will be used for different use cases. Some platforms may be more oriented towards large consortium style events while other platforms may be better suited for smaller networking events.
When you vet your virtual career fair options, it will be important to keep in mind the type of recruiting event that you’re trying to implement. By clearly defining your event scope, you will immediately have a better gauge on the features that will be best suited for your specific event needs when you look at various virtual career fair platforms.
Medium of Communication
Most virtual career fair platforms are centered around video chats or text chats as a medium of communication between recruiters and job seekers.
When choosing your virtual career fair platform, it will be important to clarify the medium of communication of the platform that you’re vetting.
For instance, video chats are more engaging and often convey more context that text-chats cannot provide. Things like dress etiquette, voice intonation, and overall presentation are lost in translation in a text-chat.
That said, text chats are less involved than a video chat and require less effort on both the recruiters’ end and job-seekers’ end. Consequently, text chats could be preferred if you would like a less formal face-to-face video based virtual fair.
The communication medium provided by your virtual fair platform will be paramount to the networking experience that you want your career fair stakeholders to have.
Ease of Use
No matter how many bells and whistles a virtual career fair platform may boast, at the end of the day if the platform is not easy to adopt and use, the platform will probably cause more headaches than help.
The “ease of use” of a virtual career fair platform will ultimately be up to you to gauge when reviewing a specific platform; however, if you’re having trouble understanding how a platform will be implemented, chances are it’s probably not easy to use.
Ease of use is paramount to the success of your virtual event. If your recruiters and job seekers alike have trouble understanding the platform, you will be plagued with questions and complaints throughout your event.
When evaluating the ease of use of a platform, you should consider how simple the user interface is and how likely your stakeholders can “pick it up”. If you believe that your stakeholders are a tech savvy audience, then they most likely will be able to pick up more complex features and technology, but if not, it will be crucial to provide a platform that has great ease of use.
Time Zone Accommodation
Since you don’t have to be physically present at a virtual career fair, job seekers and recruiters could be in various locations spanning across different time zones during your virtual fair.
With that reality in mind, it’s extremely important to consider the ability for your virtual career fair platform to accommodate different time zones.
When connecting your recruiters and job seekers, the virtual career fair platform should seamlessly adjust time zones for different perspectives so that you don’t have to worry about continuously communicating time zone differences to your audience.
If your virtual fair platform accounts for different time zones, you will 100% face less day-of issues and confusion during your event.
Cost
An obvious consideration that can never go unanswered is cost. Given the variety of options available, there are virtual fair platforms that can be purchased at different price points.
Although one might think that the more expensive option will provide better quality, that isn’t always the case. As mentioned earlier in the article, if you can find a platform that best fits your specific event scope and provides the ease-of-use that your audience needs, that should be the main barometer that you work with.
Some platforms may charge immense amounts of money for various bells and whistles that may not even be necessary for your event scope. On the other hand, some platforms may even be free but not provide the proper networking options for your audience.
Ultimately, it will be up to you during your search for the best platform to decide which features will provide the best ROI. But once again, more expensive doesn’t always mean better in your search for the platform that best fits your needs.
Timeline
Something that may not be too obvious when choosing a virtual platform is your own internal timeline for your event.
When timelining for a virtual career fair, you need to consider when you plan to invite your recruiters and promote your event to students. This may take anywhere a long as two months to as little as three weeks!
Off of that consideration, you should ask vendors how long it will take to properly implement their platform for your various stakeholders. From there, you can ensure that the platform can be comfortably implemented within your own internal timelines.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, there will be many considerations unique to your needs that you will need to consider as you look for a virtual career fair platform; however, by keeping the aforementioned six in mind, you’ll have a good starting point to work off of and be in good shape to make an informed decision later on.
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