![How to master recruitment events? [En]](https://www.catalyst.ro/wp-content/uploads/bfi_thumb/career-fair-crop-mp4npnznxrpay1c3l1ajjvn5n9k9lg14wsmb1vt1n0.png "How to master recruitment events? [En]")
April 8th, 2016
Your company’s success depends on the involvement of your employees. Regarding this aspect, all recruiters are dreaming of hiring the best qualified candidates that fit their requirements. But, as we know, sometimes we are interested in some candidates, but they might not show interest in working with us. What can we do in order to attract high potential and keep them engaged?
„The Most Desired Employers Survey” reveals the fact that 65% of the 12 000 respondents use to promote their career opportunities by their company site, 58% post their opening positions on career websites and 40% are using Social Networks. As you can conclude, all three communication channels are focusing on virtual interaction. It is very important to keep up with technological changes, but we shouldn’t neglect the recruitment events that are giving us the opportunity to interact directly with potential candidates.
Source: The Most Desired Employers Survey
3 ways you can directly interact with candidates during recruitment events
1. Career Fairs
Even if you are looking to recruit or your purpose is to raise brand awareness among candidates, career fairs are the best choice, because you have guaranteed results. There are many benefits for you as a participating company.
- Interact with a large pool of candidates – during the event you will have the access to thousands of people from students, fresh graduates to professionals; this means you will have the chance to talk directly with them, present your career opportunities, your projects, clarify their misunderstandings and answer all their questions.
- Schedule interviews or be ready for on-the-spot interviews – by socializing with potential candidates at your booth, you will find individuals that will show their interest in working with you. You already received their CV, so in order to make sure that you keep them engaged, you can schedule an interview where you can know them better. Moreover, some career fairs have arranged a special area, exclusively for interviews.
- Collect data from candidates’ CVs – increase your contact database and keep in touch with the candidates who have visited your booth. After the event, send them an e-mail or newsletter about your opening positions and encourage them to apply.
- Increase brand awareness – by participating at career fairs you can show your creativeness and organizational culture. Step out of the crowd and be present with the most innovative booth that will catch job seekers’ eyes. Investing in employer branding is necessary for becoming a top-of-mind company.
An example of career fair in Romania is Angajatori de TOP – the biggest recruitment & employer branding event in Romania, that takes place any spring and fall since 2006.
2. Open Days
Today it is very important to be proactive when finding candidates and setting up a custom recruitment event can be a great opportunity for your company. By organizing an Open Day event at your headquarter will bring you individuals interested in starting a career in your company. Offer them insights about your organizational culture, processes and departments and make them part of your story. Involve your employees in order to give examples from their experience, for more credibility.
Candidates will appreciate that you have organized an event especially for them where they can come closer to you and this will raise the number & quality of applications.
For example, Robert Bosch – R&D Department organized last year an Open Day in Cluj-Napoca that had 76 participants interested in starting a career in their company. Here is a case study about this type of recruitment events.
3. Competitions
Competitions are a great way to test potential candidates, where they can put their skills in the spotlight. Moreover, anyone wants to be the winner, so they will try their best in order to achieve the purpose.
By organizing interactive activities you have the chance to see more than what they are selling in an interview including: how they act under pressure, if they have teamwork or individual spirit or if they can adapt to your company culture.
Another benefit is that you can adapt this type of recruitment competitions for different activity areas as: Marketing, Sales, IT, Consultancy etc.
For example, DevHacks is a hackathon where 400 developers come together to code for transforming the local reality and where actions become solutions.
These are just some offline event ideas you can implement in order to attract the best candidates and to raise brand awareness among them.
Here is a great case study about the Ubisoft Game Jam.
