How To Host a Virtual Hiring Event

Are you looking for new ways to find qualified candidates to build your workforce? The job market is competitive, and connecting with the right talent through traditional job boards isn’t working. One way to put your company in the spotlight for job seekers is through hiring events, which can take place online. Learn how to host a virtual hiring event from our experts.

What is a virtual hiring event?

In a virtual hiring event, employers can interact online with a large pool of candidates. Job seekers provide their resumes and experience, and you can conduct one-on-one or group interviews to get to know them and what skills they possess.

Virtual hiring events have many benefits, including:

• They are less costly than in-person events.
• They’re your events, so you can structure them how you like.
• They provide a low-pressure way to meet candidates and learn about them.
• They’re a way to set expectations for those who want to work for you regarding the candidate experience and what it’s like to work at your company.

How do you host a virtual hiring event?

What steps can you take to host a virtual hiring event?

To hold a successful event that delivers on your expectations, follow these steps:

• Create a list of goals for the event. What do you expect to accomplish? This could be making hires immediately or building a recruitment pipeline, for example.
• Choose a hosting platform with the features you need. There are solutions available designed for virtual events. When comparing options, look at functionality such as Q&A settings, breakout rooms, registration and livestreaming.
• Decide how you’ll promote it and what registration will entail. You’ll need to develop a strategy for promotion and registration. Promoting it could involve email outreach to candidates in your database, LinkedIn campaigns or working with a career services partner.
• Determine who from your company will participate. In most cases, this should be hiring managers and HR staff.
• Develop a schedule. Your event will need internal organization and an agenda. Once you develop this, communicate it to attendees.
• Document how you’ll follow up with candidates after the event. The final step is to decide what you’ll do after the event to progress toward hiring.

Before going all in on a virtual hiring event, you should evaluate if it will deliver the support you need for workforce planning.

Is a virtual hiring event right for you?

While there are many benefits to hosting virtual events, these events aren’t always the best option. What they do well is gather potential employees into one space, which creates efficiency in the hiring process. Hosting one, however, doesn’t guarantee you’ll find someone with the right skills matched to the job.

The reality is that these events suffer from the same challenges as all traditional recruitment activities; they are all antiquated practices that aren’t working in the modern world. How people work today is different and will continue to evolve. As a result, many employers are wisely shifting to skills-based hiring.

This approach focuses on someone’s abilities, aptitudes and attitudes and how their skill set aligns with a role rather than degrees or specific experience. Skills-based hiring removes many of the flawed aspects of traditional recruitment.

Companies, however, still need a more efficient way to execute this and are trying different options. A recent Harvard Business Review article looked at the dysfunctional hiring process. The author relayed how one business realized it needed to redesign its process, revising the questions it asked prospective hires. This did help uncover better candidates, but it was still a manual process that was difficult to scale.

For any organization to adapt to skills-based hiring, the better option is to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to match a person’s abilities, attributes and attitudes to a role’s needs. AI in the background helps ask the “right” questions, removing the bias and guesswork of trying to discern who someone is based solely on a resume.

Machine learning algorithms power the platform. The solution combines human and technical sources. It’s more advanced than resume matching, which only looks for keywords. It’s revolutionizing hiring, creating better outcomes for candidates and those who are hiring.

If you start with this strategy, your virtual hiring event will focus on those who are already good matches for the roles you have. It automatically narrows the pool to the best people for the job based on their skills and potential. You can then focus on interviews with substance and performance-based objectives.

Get to know pepelwerk.

The pepelwerk platform streamlines the candidate experience and allows you to track and measure outcomes. Our solution offers a better way to hire that improves the quality of candidates and can reduce your cost of hire.

One of the best ways to experience the pepelwerk way is by attending one of our events. Find an event near you.