The potential employee talent that you attract to your business during the recruitment phase will ultimately determine the overall success of your enterprise.
A Jobs Fair is a well proven marketing strategy for attracting many individuals under one roof, at the same time, however for most companies it is a significant investment in terms of the time and resources invested, so how can we maximise this investment, and have the best chance of ensuring that the right and in many cases the preferred candidates visit our booth ? What overall winning strategies can we engage in to achieve this ? How can we best demonstrate who we are ?
Top Tips for Attracting the Best Candidates
Advertise
Potential employees need to know in advance that your Company will be attending the Jobs Fair and has a dedicated Booth. You will need a good and robust social media presence, as interested candidates may already be regularly following the companies social media pages. Ensure social media is featured in your Marketing strategies for the Jobs Fair. Prominently advertise your presence both in the Jobs Fair literature and advertise on your own social media press page and corporate magazines leading up to the Jobs Fair to maximise the opportunities. This will allow potential employees to be prepared to visit your booth and come prepared to engage and grasp the opportunities on offer.
Offer Refreshments and Marketing Products
Success at any Jobs Fair depends on the bustle and buzz you can generate around your booth, the more candidates seen enjoying the “coffee, cake and a chat” vibe the more footfall can be generated towards the booth, and this is a fairly fun and inexpensive way of attracting and lifting the potential. Branded items such as pens, caps and t.shirts with company branding, are very popular, and for a younger crowd maybe power banks or flash drives would be a more attractive proposition to drive potential candidates in.
Brand Visibility
Ensure potential candidates know where to find you. Prominent Posters, Brochures and Banners should be everywhere. The Booth should be featuring the company logo. Ideally your team could be kitted out in clothing displaying the company logo, for example Polo Shirts and Caps. It is also important that the team has a name tag clearly identifying who they are.
Brochures
The Brochure should introduce the Company and what job opportunities are available, try and use a couple of the team members to wander around the fair handing out brochures and interacting with prospective employees, at a very minimum a brochure should be handed out to everyone who visits the booth.
List Job Opportunities
It is a good idea to display a comprehensive list of positions currently being recruited for, this will lead focused, potential candidates to the booth. It also provides the opportunity to ensure only those candidates for which there are opportunities, take up the valuable time of the team members, rather than lose them to another competing booth due to no one being available to discuss job opportunities.
Be Proactive
Ensure the whole team is motivated to engage with the potential employees. Don’t be passive, approach the potential applicants in a positive and friendly manner, maybe handing them a brochure, ensure the team members with the most engaging and outgoing approach can be used to encourage interested applicants to come into a quiet area of the booth for one to one interactions to discuss the organisation and the job opportunities on offer and giving them the chance to ask questions in a more convivial setting.
Interviewing at the Booth
If a potential candidate is the right fit for your organisation, and has the time, space should be set aside for provisional interviews, by offering an immediate provisional interview it will show the potential candidate your organisations seriousness about the jobs on offer, and their interest.
Follow-up
Encourage all visitors to the booth to leave their contact details so you can do a follow up communication to them afterwards, this should be done within a week, but could include for example a request for them to forward their CV for consideration or possibly the offer of an interview, if the potential candidate was for example a good good fit with the company.
Overview
A Jobs Fair if it is approached in the right way in terms of focus, marketing and branding, offers an organisation the prime opportunity to attract top talent to their organisation and to hit their overall strategic recruitment goals,
