Two Pods in a Pea: Career Fairs and Matchmaking
Unraveling the resemblance between career fairs and matchmaking
Career fairs are heaven to any job seekers worldwide: it’s a place with infinite opportunities for them to work towards what they aspire to become. However, not everything is glitter and gold, which rings true for career fair events. Once job seekers return home, burnout occurs: they feel exhausted from dragging themselves through the crowd all day, engaging in conversations that turn out to be a mismatch with their capabilities.
In the end, their career fair adventure might just end up with an overwhelming feeling of tiredness and defeat.
But that’s a story from the past. Now, career fairs have been shifting to either a virtual or hybrid format that saves job seekers from energy drain without losing the essentiality. The digitized process expands the fact-finding capability, allowing job seekers and employers much more time to discover relevant opportunities before transiting to the actual onsite event.
Reducing the fatigue of walking around the vast event space and blindly dealing with the crowd like it used to be, career fairs have now returned to their initial calling: actually connecting employers and job seekers.
Career Fairs Challenge Today…
With most events having gone virtual due to the pandemic, career fairs have also joined the bandwagon. Ever since the beginning of 2020, numerous virtual career fairs have been held, and many digitalization attempts have been made continuously in various aspects to ensure that the newly-formatted events do not lose their essence.
As career fairs go hybrid and virtual, more questions are raised: How can career fairs be more effective in connecting companies and job seekers when they don’t meet in person? How to engage both parties better? How can companies and job seekers leverage this new kind of event to meet their expectations?
There is only one answer to these questions: matchmaking.
Matchmaking and Career Fairs: Find the Resemblance
Job seeking is similar to dating apps, don’t you think? It’s about finding the perfect match that suits your taste, needs, and personality. And more importantly, it requires sparks of chemistry between both parties.
Simply put, it’s all about the right matchmaking.
When it comes to hybrid and virtual events, career fairs no less, matchmaking plays a big part in sparking conversations, matching job seekers with employers and positions, providing efficient networking, and facilitating every entity to gain the most out of the events.
It might be easy to find the perfect match on-site where job seekers can visit live booths of all participating companies, and there might also be walk-in interviews that help them land a job immediately. Matchmaking makes all these interactions possible with even more relevancy and efficacy. It brings more convenience for companies to find a person who meets their requirements and for job seekers to land the job of their dream.
The changes from on-site to hybrid and virtual don’t make job fairs lose their charm. In fact, it amplifies them.
The Hero Called AI
Here we arrive at the core challenge: how does the perfect match happen on a digital platform?
The AI-powered matchmaking is not icing on the cake — it’s the star of the show! AI matchmaking works to increase both the quantity and quality of meetings and conversations between parties involved in the event. It enables them to get in touch before the event begins, allowing them to connect directly to find either the best position or the best candidates, according to what they look for.
Moreover, AI-powered matchmaking with its untapped potential in data and recommendation saves you more time yet is capable of bringing more valuable insights to the table. However, AI matchmaking in events works beyond keywords and titles — it focuses on a deeper level by learning attendees’ past behavior. Hence, resulting in better matchmaking for each person rather than generalized recommendations without taking their interests into account.
As such, we at Jublia have already set our footings into job fair events, where effective matchmaking plays a crucial role in their success. Leveraging on our best in class, the RevRank AI works seamlessly to match job seekers (People), employers (Company), and positions (Product), through the recent changes from Meetings to Conversations.
More Time, More Gain
The current situation surrounding our lives might not be the best, and we are forced to adapt in so many new ways to keep things going. In the case of events, most had to shift to virtual, unfamiliar territory for many organizers, and to evolve to hybrid later at some points. Indeed, there are many lessons to learn.
But there are always silver linings in every cloud. The job fair events, for example, provide more efficiency to each stakeholder involved, from organizers, employers, tech providers, and the job seekers themselves through the digital platforms.
When one doesn’t have to depart to a venue, they save time for more thorough preparation in attending job fair events. Hence, attendees will be able to get the best value out of it. As for the employers, the hybrid and virtual job fairs are a perfect opportunity to spread their net wider, piercing through the cultural and geographical barriers to find the best recruits for the company.
Digital platforms start way earlier before the event starts on-site, and do not just end when it concludes. As events are happening virtually, post-events conversations are highly possible. The span of hybrid and virtual job fairs is definitely above and beyond those limited 1–2 days of on-site job fairs.
It’s Just an Appetizer!
Jublia not only listens to your concerns, but we are also continuously coming up with solutions. We are currently gearing up for career events by adapting our excellent matchmaking and other solutions as the backbone to support your events to success.
Stay tuned and look forward to what we have in store for you! If you want to know more, do follow us on our LinkedIn and email us at info@jublia.com today.
