Your company is hiring. So you post a job listing online and you engage in several video chats with candidates across the world. But are you effectively reaching the global audience you desire? If your company wants to attract the most ideal candidates, it has to go the extra mile.
While a job fair is an enticing solution, hosting a physical event will cost your company a lot of money. For example, your organization may have to pay for the facility, equipment, supplies, permits, insurance, and security. This can significantly drive up the cost of a single recruit.
A virtual recruiting environment, however, is a way to drastically reduce the cost of hiring while reaching more talent. Recruiting Scope, an online resource for recruiters, found in a recent study that the median cost per recruit to attend an in-person job fair is $121 vs. $19 per recruit at a virtual one.
A virtual event can speed up the recruiting process, since you can interact with candidates before you proceed with interviews, and it’s easy to escalate candidates you’re interested in. It’s also generally easier to arrange meetings with hiring managers since there’s no travel involved.
Here are five ways your organization can leverage a virtual recruiting environment to improve the hiring process:
1. Engage with potential recruits or new hires. The goal in any hiring process is to hire a good candidate. But part of that process is mitigating the odds of making a mistake. Therefore, you want to maximize the level of candidate engagement before people are brought in for interviews to ensure they are perfect fits. An electronic resume and a phone conversation might not be enough to properly gauge candidates. A virtual recruiting environment allows you to get a better understanding of candidates before you engage. You can view documents they’ve provided, interact via chat and Skype, and even hold an instant meeting.
2. Make your prospects comfortable and secure online. One of the primary challenges in any online interaction has to do with establishing both comfort and security. Whether sending a resume to a potential employer or speaking in real time with a company recruiter, the recruiting process can be daunting for a prospect. The enhanced security of a virtual recruiting center, such as the ability to enter a private chat with company representatives in a secure environment, can reduce the likelihood of losing a potential employee due to security concerns or lack of information.
3. Tell your own story. A virtual recruiting center can make use of existing templates and your branding in a unique environment that will showcase your company, or custom visuals can be designed. For example, one major online employment company targeting health care customized its recruiting center with a visual theme that incorporated images of medical professionals. Whatever your brand image or target audience, your recruiting center can address it.
4. Design your recruiting events to suit your needs. While a physical job fair will only reach candidates at a specific location, a virtual career fair expands your reach to anywhere in the world. One global professional services firm held a two-day virtual career fair that spanned 40 countries, yielding 20,000 registrants and 10,000 attendees over the course of 48 hours. Virtual recruiting allows candidates from any time zone to engage with your organization when it’s best for them.
Instead of a job fair that lasts a specified length of time—one day, one week, or one month, for example—you can present an online recruiting center that’s open on an ongoing basis, cultivating candidates 24/365.
5. Grant access to real-time information, right away. During the hiring process, information gathering is a two-way street. Not only do your company’s recruiters and hiring managers have a lot of questions, so do candidates. Recruiting centers allow candidates to view presentations, download materials, and even speak with company representatives to determine whether your company and the opportunity are a good fit. After the hire, your virtual center can streamline onboarding.
Virtual recruiting environments can reduce costs and eliminate the need to travel, speed up hiring, and improve your access to the global talent pool—so you can find people with the right skills, whenever and wherever you need them.
Susan Levand is Product Marketing manager of the Event Services business at conferencing and collaboration services provider InterCall, a subsidiary of West Corporation. She can be reached at slevand@intercall.com.
