COVID-19 has changed the way companies hire, perhaps permanently. Many companies have converted their in-person recruitment efforts to virtual events, including career fairs. Take a look at the following stats:
- Under normal circumstances, virtual career fairs have an average participation rate of 50%, but this figure has increased to as high as 90% since COVID-19.
- 45% of employers are using virtual hiring events more since the onset of the pandemic.
- Due to the pandemic, experts predict that 80% of recruiting will remain virtual for the foreseeable future.
Because of such shift, virtual career fair platforms have become indispensable to talent acquisition teams. Not only are these platforms a great way for companies to continue hiring during COVID-19, but they also expedite the hiring process while keeping recruitment costs low.
In this guide, we’ll dive into the best online career fair platforms, along with best practices for running a virtual career fair, pitfalls, and much more.
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We take our research seriously and want to make sure we are presenting our readers with the very best solutions in a given software category. Here's how we select vendors to be in our buyer guides:
- Product: We want to have a deep understanding of a vendor's product before recommending it. This usually means getting a demo by a senior executive (their CEO, head of product, etc), and/or using the product ourselves to make sure it has a solid UI, intuitive workflows, and the features to make it a best in class offering.
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Here's more detail if you want to read further on how we research vendors.
In this guide you'll find
- Top Online Career Fair Vendors
- Use Cases of virtual career fair platforms
- Pitfalls to avoid when using a virtual career fair platform
- Pricing Models of Virtual Career Fair Platforms
- Features of Virtual Career Fair Platforms
- Questions to ask on Demos
- Implementing a Virtual Career Fair Solution
- Virtual Career Fair FAQs
- Best Practices
Featured in
Top Online Career Fair Vendors
We track thousands of HRTech solutions, these are the best online recruiting event platforms per our research and expert council as of 2022.
Why we love it
:
Build powerful virtual career fairs with Brazen's easy-to-use platform. Fortune 500 companies & top universities rely on Brazen to offer a great candidate experience with events that include live presentations, 1:1 video, audio or text chats and so much more.
Brazen
Review:
Brazen has been a leader in the virtual career fair world for nearly a decade. In as little as 15 minutes, you can create an event and start marketing to job seekers.
Brazen’s platform has many thoughtful features that you’d expect to make it easy for job seekers to find the right “booth” within a career fair and engage with recruiters via text or video. On the employer side, there are many features to help recruiting teams efficiently engage with and vet job seekers including pre-written responses to common questions, and the ability to chat with multiple candidates at once.
Brazen
Customers:
Spectrum, CVS Health, Temple University
Brazen
Stats:
- Founded in 2007
- $13.4 million in funding
Best For:
Large companies looking to keep a warm hiring pipeline.
Worth Checking Out:
This solution truly mirrors the experience of attending an in person recruiting event which makes for an enjoyable experience for both candidates and recruiters. Learn more about Brazen.
Why we love it
:
Used by companies that include the likes of Amazon, Talentspace enables talent engagement with features for measuring hiring success. Its sleek design and features such as one-to-one chats, booths, and more, make for a delightful recruiting experience.
Talentspace
Review:
Why do people go to career fairs in the first place? According to Talentspace, it’s to meet people face to face, connect, and get inspired. This is the idea that they’ve developed their product around. It’s an approach to the virtual career fair that tries to mimic what it’s like to attend a job fair physically, with all the benefits of doing it online in an easy-to-use platform.
One of these benefits is the amount of analytics that they’re able to pull from their solution. Everything within the platform is trackable and available through built-in reports. Also, while lots of Talentspace’s features are geared towards a live event, big or small, the functionality can be accessed afterwards for an indefinite time.
Talentspace
Customers:
Talentspace is trusted by hundreds of organizations. Some of them are Amazon, Brown University, Porsche, Yoloworks!, and the Job Service of North Dakota and Little Rock Workforce Development Board.
Talentspace
Stats:
- Talentspace is used by over 1,500 organizations
- 200k+ users
- As of September 2021, they have 35 employees
Talentspace
Pricing:
More often than not, Talentspace’s pricing is fully customized according to your expected career fair size and other requirements. While that makes it hard to share exact figures, we can say that they offer both single-event and annual licenses; at a price that invites you to host events regularly.
Best For:
Talentspace is used by organizations of multiple sizes and within many different industries; whether it's for large career fairs with thousands of participants or intimate webinars. They’re particularly great for workforce development boards and universities.
Worth Checking Out:
Talentspace puts a nice emphasis on data privacy and security. They are GDPR & CCPA-compliant, their product is hosted in a secure cloud, and they have numerous ISO and SOC certifications.
Why we love it
:
VidCruiter is very efficient and user-friendly. Not only do you get a dedicated account manager and unlimited training, but you also get access to some compelling features such as pre-recorded video interviews, automated scheduling, and interview rating guides.
- VidCruiter’s customers can choose the modules they want and purchase them individually, or purchase the entire recruiting suite, inclusive of all modules, i.e. video interviewing, applicant tracking, skill assessments, scheduling, and more.
- VidCruiter’s pre-recorded interview feature saves hiring managers a lot of time and eliminates scheduling conflicts. It also offers candidates the flexibility to record their answers at their convenience.
- VidCruiter supports mobile recruiting for on-the-go access. Both candidates and recruiters can view pre-recorded video interviews or join live video interviews/conferences from their iOS and Android mobile devices.
- VidCruiter’s account managers are quite hands-on. Besides helping you get started with the platform, they’ll also help you perform other processes, such as setting up the tracking and conversion metrics of your targeted ad campaigns so you can measure their success.
- VidCruiter is a multilingual recruiting solution. Besides English, it’s available in French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Chinese, and Korean, both for recruiters and candidates.
- Several users have reported a steep learning curve and that the UI takes some time to get used to.
- A few users reported occasional video lag issues that aren’t internet connectivity-related.
- VidCruiter’s skills assessment module is great as an add-on, but isn’t built out enough compared to point solutions in that space. For example, it doesn’t really support advanced technical skills testing.
- VidCruiter doesn’t have a lot of pre-built integration options with HRIS/Payroll systems. That said, VidCruiter’s team is working on expanding their partner network and might create integrations upon customer requests.
VidCruiter
Review:
VidCruiter has been a leader in the talent acquisition technology space for quite some time. They now offer a virtual career fair platform for companies that want to transcend candidates' busy schedules and geographic constraints.
Their online career fair platform is a great way for companies to scalably attract and vet many candidates at once while still offering a great experience for potential employees.
Talent acquisition teams can use their platform to build landing pages to promote the event and then schedule interested applicants with recruiters, or asynchronous video interviews. There are also customization options such as the ability to provide interviewers standardized hiring rubrics which cuts down on operational complexity and bias in the hiring process.
VidCruiter
Customers:
Lowes, Samsung, Lionsgate
VidCruiter
Stats:
- VidCruiter is trusted by 75,000+ Recruiters
- Had helped companies hire 7,000+ employees in two weeks
- Scalable for organizations of any size
- 24/7 Support
Best For:
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
:
Paradox is mobile-first and lets you create virtual events within minutes. Once you sign up for this software, you can sit back and relax as it would do the hard work of handling event registrations, sending reminders, and introducing job seekers to a live recruiter.
Paradox
Review:
Paradox has built a virtual recruiting platform that allows companies to quickly create, market, and run hiring events. Their chatbot, Olivia, will take registrations, remind attendees about the upcoming event, and help coordinate while the event is running. Olivia will also conduct pre-screens, and answer candidate questions while they wait to talk to a recruiter. Their platform is great for recruiting, internal mobility, or a replacement for on campus recruiting. Lastly, they have no limits on users or seats which can be a huge plus for organizations that want to run larger events.
Paradox
Customers:
Great Wolf Lodge, Wendy's, DP Electric
Paradox
Stats:
- 75+ events hosted
- 4,000 attendees
- 20% of attendees advanced to final interview or offer stage
Best For:
High volume hiring companies and industries.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
:
Premier Virtual comes with a plethora of features that are available at your fingertips. Some of its best features include a fully customizable hiring room, live reporting during events, candidate-matching, built-in email reminders, and more.
Premier Virtual
Review:
Premier virtual has designed a virtual career fair platform that mirrors very closely the experience of an in-person event. Their platform allows host organizers or talent acquisition teams to host single events, or design a strategy around remote hiring events throughout the year.
Their platform is great for organizations who want to host these types of events and want key features like 1:1 video chat, text chat with pre-canned responses to maximize efficiency.
Premier Virtual
Customers:
Virginia Career Works, Nashville Technology Council, Catalyst Career Group
Premier Virtual
Stats:
- 1,100 virtual hiring events have been hosted through their platform
- 13,000 employers have used their platform
- Over 130,000 job seekers have attended an event powered by Premier Virtual
- The exclusive state wide virtual event platform for the states of Virginia, Wisconsin, Florida, Massachusetts and Tennessee
- The official virtual event platform for 1 in 3 workforce boards nationwide
Premier Virtual
Pricing:
Pricing is competitive relative to other industry players. They offer a single event package all the way up through five year deals.
Best For:
Premier Virtual is great for organizations that either want to run one off or ongoing online recruiting events.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
:
GR8 People is powerful and affordable. It has a built-in talent CRM and integrates well with your organization's video communications app, automates registrations, lets candidates self-schedule, and also develops your initial email templates.
GR8 People
Review:
GR8 People has recently launched a virtual recruiting event solution that allows companies to continue marketing and managing hiring events virtually despite COVID-19. Their tools allow companies to spin up a branded landing page for each event, leverage templates for automated communications for registration and reminders, pre-screen and invite attendees to self-schedule a time to chat with recruiters during the event, collect attendee feedback and have access to event performance reports that can be exported to the organization’s ATS.
GR8 People
Customers:
Johns Hopkins Medicine, Talbots, Polaris
GR8 People
Stats:
- 98% customer retention
- Over 1 million users
- Customers have seen up to a 40% recruiting event hire conversion rate
Best For
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
:
Unlike its competitors, Live Recruit provides a virtual recruitment event platform and helps promote hiring events to prospective candidates. Their omnichannel marketing on all target audience hotspots enables increased engagement and attendance.
- The base price is lower (plans start at $349/month for unlimited events) than the vast majority of competitor platforms.
- Live Recruit isn't just a recruitment event solution, it offers omnichannel marketing via email marketing, paid social, search engine marketing, live calls, direct mail, etc. to promote your events.
- The Event Builder feature is very easy to use, as it allows non-tech users to build events in under 6 minutes by using page templates where you just need to fill data in.
- Unlike some other similar solutions, Live Recruit allows you to video chat with candidates on the platform without relying on third-party integrations.
- The base price is lower (plans start at $349/month for unlimited events) than the vast majority of competitor platforms.
- Live Recruit isn't just a recruitment event solution, it offers omnichannel marketing via email marketing, paid social, search engine marketing, live calls, direct mail, etc. to promote your events.
- The Event Builder feature is very easy to use, as it allows non-tech users to build events in under 6 minutes by using page templates where you just need to fill data in.
- Unlike some other similar solutions, Live Recruit allows you to video chat with candidates on the platform without relying on third-party integrations.
- The starter and professional plan do not offer ATS integrations. This means you'll have to use the manual approach to export data to your preferred ATS.
- Live Recruit offers 1 to 3 recruiter seats out-the-box. If you want more you have to pay for additional permissions per event. So for companies with several recruiters, the costs will add up.
- The solution doesn't offer a support knowledge base to further simplify user navigation. If you need help finding anything you'd have to contact support.
- The starter and professional plan do not offer ATS integrations. This means you'll have to use the manual approach to export data to your preferred ATS.
- Live Recruit offers 1 to 3 recruiter seats out-the-box. If you want more you have to pay for additional permissions per event. So for companies with several recruiters, the costs will add up.
- The solution doesn't offer a support knowledge base to further simplify user navigation. If you need help finding anything you'd have to contact support.
Live Recruit
Review:
Live Recruit is a virtual hiring event platform that provides an easy-to-use landing page builder. Their landing page template utilizes custom fields that you'd just need to fill out. Then, you can upload your custom branding image and start sourcing. With this tool, most organizations build their event registration pages in under 6 minutes.
The Live Recruit team also helps out by promoting your virtual hiring efforts through digital ads, live calls, email, etc. You can engage with candidates through chat, call, video, or text.
Once they’ve left some info, you can manage candidate profiles and take next steps like rating them, taking notes, and connecting candidates to hiring managers.
Live Recruit
Customers:
Live Recruit
Stats:
- A UNC Health virtual hiring event that engaged 11,800+ candidates via omnichannel promotion, with 73% of candidates interviewed and 91% of job offers accepted.
- Bayard Advertising's virtual hiring event saw 30,000 candidates engaged via omnichannel marketing, with 70% of interviewed candidates extended offers.
- Time to fill has been seen to decrease by 3 days.
- Customer data reveals 2.5 hrs saved in hiring time.
Live Recruit
Pricing:
Live Recruit offers 3 pricing plans with each differing in the available features and number of recruiter seats permitted:
- Starter: This plan costs $349 per month and includes 1 recruiter seat ($295 with an annual subscription).
- Professional: The Professional plan costs $899 per month and allows for 3 recruiter seats ($765 with an annual subscription).
- Enterprise: This plan uses custom pricing, offers 3 recruiter seats, and more features.
Best For
Live Recruit is best for in-house recruiters, recruitment firms, and temporary staffing agencies based in the United States looking to recruit anywhere from 5 to 5000 candidates via virtual events.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
:
EightFold boasts an AI-powered Talent Intelligence platform that helps remove manual effort from resume data entry, lets you automatically find people who are the most interested in your event, all while removing the need for a separate system for interview scheduling.
eightfold
Review:
EightFold allows companies to quickly setup virtual recruiting events. These events can include kick off presentations from the CEO, 1:1 interactions with candidates, and of course the ability to schedule top candidates directly into interviews.
eightfold
Customers:
Capital One, Hulu, Air Asia, BayerBooking.com
eightfold
Stats:
- Customers have seen up to 50% more efficient recruiting
- Customers have noticed up to 19% improved diversity
Best For
Companies looking for an entire AI sourcing suite that includes career fairs.
Worth Checking Out:
Eightfold uses AI to give candidates insights into where they may fit into a given company based on their resume/assessment and the company’s open reqs.
Why we love it
:
With an intuitive and customizable layout, Hopin virtually connects employers and job seekers. Candidates can attend panels, visit booths, engage with recruiters, and build networks.
Hopin
Review:
Hopin's virtual events software empowers organizations to run virtual career fairs that allow job seekers and companies to come together in a simple to use platform. Their offering allows organizations to create registration pages and market a career fair. The day of, there is no need to download software for attendees as they can seamlessly enter the fair, and then engage in group sessions, or 1:1 with recruiters. There are several different options on the company side including Q&As, a speed dating format, screen shares, or pre-recorded videos.
Hopin
Customers:
Adobe, Twitch, The Atlantic
Hopin
Stats:
- 45,000+ events hosted
- Used by over 30,000 organizations
- 99% of organizers say they'd use Hopin again
Hopin
Pricing:
Hopin has a $100/mo plan for smaller events, and annual plans with slightly more robust feature sets for larger organizations starting at $799/mo up to custom pricing.
Best For
Worth Checking Out:
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Best Practices
If you’re going to setup virtual events as part of your recruiting process, we wanted to share some best practices we’ve learned while putting this guide together so that you can be successful:
- Leverage Career site: Make sure to use your career website to drive traffic to your virtual event’s sign up page. Obviously, a lot of job seekers with high intent are checking you out on your career page, do your best to drive this traffic to your next online event.
- Leverage Job Postings: Instead of having people apply to a role on your job postings, you can drive people to a virtual career fair sign up page. This allows you to sell the candidate on your organization, and quickly get a feel for whether you want to push them into the actual interview process.
- Talent Pools: Past applicants, silver medalists, talent community members and any other candidate database are great pools of talent you should be telling about your next career events.
- Social Proof: Social proof your signup pages with quotes from past job seekers about your events, what makes your company a great place to work, and any other third party validation of your organization (Glassdoor ratings, awards, funding, customer logos, etc).
- Set Expectations: Many job seekers have never been to a virtual career fair – let them know what to expect. Who will be there from your team, how long will they get to chat with them, how long will it take, text vs video chats, how to prepare, etc.
- Candidate Notes: Just like in a normal job fair, your recruiters will meet a ton of candidates. Make sure they are taking notes immediately after talking to a given candidate so that they know whether or not they want to move them forward.
Last Advice
If your company is still hiring during COVID-19, then you’re going to want to look at virtual career fairs as a way to get in front of and convert candidates.
However, we’d say that even after social distancing becomes less important, virtual career fairs are a great way to engage talent and move them down your hiring funnel.
So, it makes sense to explore this channel for companies, recruiting firms, and organizations that run their own career fairs. Good luck!
Best Virtual Career Fair Platforms
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