The world is finally opening up again, but many aspects of COVID-19 life may still be here to stay. Online versions of events, such as college job fairs, college interviews and more may be among COVID-era practices that have a lot of benefits staying after COVID-era.
Career fairs have long been an aspect of university life that have enabled students to get a better understanding of what their life might be like after graduation. Many schools are opting to keep job fairs virtual for the foreseeable future. Career fairs are an opportunity for students to network with potential employers, ask questions about the day-to-day operations of jobs they may be interested in, and learn invaluable lessons on how to navigate through the world once they’ve received their degree.
In the digital world, the opportunities presented in job fairs open up to new heights, giving students more opportunities than ever to learn more about the careers they want to get into after they graduate. Through social media, online seminars and lectures, and internship opportunities, students are able to interact with these career paths in ways they never could have before, giving them a better understanding of their futures and giving your university a much more robust service to offer your students.
What are the benefits of career fairs?
Networking
Career fairs offer invaluable opportunities for your students to network with people that are already in the professional sphere. Having industry professionals visit your students gives them the opportunity to ask the right questions, and even plant seeds for their own professional lives by forming lasting relationships with these people.
Opportunities To Ask Questions
Students often have a rough idea of a career or industry they want to get into. However, without being able to ask questions, they may find that they don’t know enough about the day to day operations of a job. Job fairs give students invaluable opportunities to question their future, and ask professionals for the answers they need to decide what to do with their future.
Helping Students Succeed In School
At a first glance, it may seem that job fairs only help graduating students to find the right jobs. The truth, though, is that job fairs help students in any stage of their education learn which skills they need to have when they enter the professional field. Job fairs can help students figure out the skills they want to develop, giving them a clearer path and helping them determine which classes to pick each semester.
Internships
Beyond helping students figure out what to do in their educational careers, job fairs can help students find internships earlier on in their educational path. These internships can put them ahead of their peers on graduation day. Today many jobs require field experience while hiring, and internships provide that to students wanting to break into a field right after graduation.
Virtual or Remote Job Fairs Can Expand These Opportunities Rather Than Hinder Them
The reason why many universities are keeping the remote job fair is because they’ve found that this is a better opportunity to help their students—both current and prospective. It helps connect with industry professionals all around the world since it is virtual. Technology has opened doors for events in new ways, enabling event planners to expand communications using new platforms like social media and online conferencing tools in new ways.
Social Media
Tools like Twitter, Clubhouse, TikTok and Instagram have enabled event planners to expand both the reach and scope of their events in ways that were previously unfathomable. At virtual job fairs, organizers are able to create events on apps like Clubhouse or Zoom and integrate other social media channels into those events by promoting cross-platform communications. Students can watch seminars on Twitter or listen on Clubhouse and ask questions, either on the apps during the event or beforehand through Twitter and Instagram.
The use of social media during job fair events also incentivizes students to think about their digital footprint in new ways. How do your students want their social media accounts to be perceived by potential employers? How can your students use social media to their professional advantage as a networking tool? Using digital tools like social media encourages students to consider these things naturally and learn skills that are valuable to the professional world but may not be taught in school.
Benefits for Potential Students
Virtual, remote job fairs open up new doors to reach more people than they do at in-person events. Prospective students that may not understand the benefits of job fairs before enrollment can now attend the virtual events to begin thinking about their professional futures beyond college.
Job fairs also offer networking opportunities; prospective students are more likely to see how their university can help them network with the right people when job fairs are online. A hefty digital footprint of how your school has helped its past and existing students will help future students decide where they want to attend your school.
Logistical Benefits: Time-saving, Cost-saving, Trackable ROI
Aside from the benefits that virtual job fairs offer to your students, universities are finding that they provide equal or greater benefit to universities. Hosting job fairs virtually not only enables universities to work with industry professionals from around the world, but saves them money when they don’t have to pay for travel costs or the general costs of putting on an event.
Time saved not having to organize travel logistics enables event planners to focus on other, more important things that will further benefit students. Schools can even offer internships to their students to help plan the event, execute social media coverage or coordinate with guests and speakers who will appear at the event.
An integration with technology allows event planners to get a better understanding of the success of their event. Analytical data will provide invaluable insight for the future, while giving a clear return on investment by showing what worked and what did not.
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