Recruitment Events: Creative Ways to Host Your Hiring Event and Engage Your Candidates

Looking to expand your team and need innovative recruiting ideas? While recruiting events are a great way to attract a large number of applicants, it is all about making sure those candidates meet your needs. Sometimes, too many companies organize events with mixed results. They sometimes leave the events without finding even one single talent that suits their needs and are often left at square one.

It doesn't have to be that way. With the right recruiting event strategies, you can bring in top talent to elevate your team and your bottom line. From virtual recruiting events to in-person hackathons, we've rounded up some of the best ideas to help your business thrive. Get your hiring team ready-it's time to recruit smarter!

What is a Recruiting Event?

At its core, a recruiting event is an event done to attract new hires for your business. However, these events can take different shapes and forms depending on what exactly you are trying to accomplish. Some example types of goals of recruiting events include:

• New Business Hiring: It could be that you opened a new office or retail space, or even open an entirely new business altogether. In this case, the event is toward acquiring new employees to fill in your ranks so you can get up and running on time to start.
• Entry-Level Event:  Some companies have a lot of entry-level positions with a relatively high turnover rate. In this type of recruiting event, you're looking to get as many applicants as possible to see which ones will be the best fit for your company. In the best of worlds, some of these candidates will move up the ladder to senior positions over the long term.
• Interview and Test: If you are searching for skilled laborers, you have to make sure they are fit for the job. This type of recruiting fair may have guests playing games or interacting with your hiring team to weed out the cream of the crop. From there, you may set up an on-site interview or a meeting at a later date.

Before setting up a new event, you must have clear and quantifiable goals. For example, how many positions are you hoping to fill? How soon would those new employees start their respective jobs? Without these details, it's impossible to know if your event was successful.

3 Tips To Recruit Smarter

Virtual recruitment solutions provide numerous advantages for companies seeking to attract and hire top talent. Here are three effective ways to use virtual events and environments to elevate your recruiting strategy:

1. Showcase Leadership

Today’s job seekers rely heavily on online resources for job listings, salary insights, and company research. However, most businesses still use outdated job boards with minimal interactivity. While some companies feature videos in their "About Us" section, they often focus on history and executive bios rather than offering meaningful engagement with candidates.

Virtual environments allow your company to stand out by leveraging innovative technology to connect directly with job seekers. Whether you host a comprehensive virtual career fair with booths for various departments or an intimate session focused on specific roles, these platforms enable real-time interaction. Features like live chat, video resources, employee testimonials, and virtual theater presentations allow you to highlight your company culture and share your story dynamically.

By demonstrating your investment in cutting-edge tools for candidate engagement, you position your company as a forward-thinking leader—an attractive quality for top talent.

2. Stay Accessible

While companies compete for top candidates, the recruitment process often leaves job seekers waiting. Lengthy delays or impersonal processes can cause even interested candidates to lose engagement or accept other offers.

Virtual recruitment events solve this problem by enabling immediate and meaningful connections. Recruiters can host live office hours within virtual booths, allowing candidates to ask questions publicly or privately. These sessions provide an opportunity for recruiters to review resumes, screen candidates, and build personal connections quickly. Even if a candidate doesn’t move forward, a positive experience increases the likelihood they’ll recommend your company to others in their network.

3. Expand Your Reach

Your ideal candidate may not live nearby, and traditional hiring methods can limit your access to top talent. While local career fairs or on-campus events might attract nearby applicants, they often exclude qualified individuals unable to travel.

Virtual events eliminate geographic barriers, enabling you to attract candidates from anywhere. Hosting a virtual career fair allows you to promote openings to a global audience through targeted ads and email campaigns. Highlighting not just the roles but also your company’s thought leadership and recruiter availability can appeal to both active and passive candidates. This broader reach gives you a significant edge in accessing diverse, high-caliber talent pools.

By adopting virtual recruitment strategies, you can enhance your hiring process, build stronger connections, and ensure your company remains competitive in today’s talent market.

Where To Start?

Let’s face it. Recruiting events is often a time-consuming experience. To increase the chances of hiring more right-fit candidates who want to work for your company, you can organize a recruitment event. The question is: what type of job recruitment event should you host? Job fairs aren’t your only option, and some formats are better at meeting certain business goals than others. Read on to find out:

• The pros and cons of each type of hiring event

• How to plan a recruiting event

• Pitfalls to avoid when hosting recruiting events

• When to use recruiting events in the hiring process

• How you can maximize your recruiting event ROI with hybrid events or virtual events

6 Best Recruiting Event Ideas

Recruiting for open positions may take many forms, and the approach you choose should align with your company's needs. These six ideas provide versatile options to help you attract the best talent. For example, if you are hiring remotely, then virtual events are a perfect fit as they expand your reach beyond local candidates. Here are ways you can make your recruiting events successful and impactful.

1. Virtual Information Sessions

With today's modern technological advancement, most jobs can be facilitated using only a laptop and access to a good connection to the internet. As such, this option is not ideal for customer-facing or on-site positions, but it is a perfect fit for those jobs that can be done remotely.

Key Benefits:

• Global Reach: Reach out for the best talent anywhere in the world.
• Cost Efficiency: More budget-friendly compared to physical venues. Hybrid events combine the strengths of both.
• Simplified Evaluations: Online tests will help to screen the candidates and identify the best candidates.

Best Practices:
Pre-register to assess commitment and weed out unqualified candidates.
Offer flexibility by opening the event for a certain period of time rather than fixed schedules. Allow one-on-one or small group sessions to interact personally.

2. Hackathons

Hackathons are excellent for technology companies looking for skilled developers and programmers. In these events, participants have to work on specific projects either individually or in groups or as competitors within 24 to 48 hours.

Why It Works:

• Assess technical skills and collaboration in real time.
• Hire candidates that fit your company culture.

Pro Tip:

Open the event to all levels of experience, not just those with extensive experience. Many talented coders develop their skills independently, and a lack of formal credentials shouldn't disqualify them.

3. Gamification Events

Games and interactive challenges are an effective way to evaluate candidates' social and teamwork skills. These events are particularly useful for roles requiring collaboration and adaptability.

Ideas for Gamified Events:

• Scavenger Hunt: Organize teams to find specific items within a set boundary or online environment.
• Escape Room: Host in-person or virtual escape room challenges to test problem-solving skills.
• Trivia Games: Create custom quizzes relevant to your industry to assess candidates' knowledge.

Best Practice:

Offer prizes or incentives to encourage participation and leave candidates with a positive impression of your company, even if they don't land a job.

4. Ask Me Anything (AMA) Sessions

AMA sessions are a growing trend for companies to connect directly with job seekers, answer questions, and provide insights into company culture.

Tips for Success:

• Prepare for Tough Questions: Have a plan to handle trolls or off-topic queries and set clear rules of engagement.
• Balance Structure and Spontaneity: Use an outline for key talking points but aim for authentic, conversational responses.
• Use a Moderator: Appoint someone to control the flow of questions and eliminate any disturbing participants from the session.

5. Career Expos

Career expos are events in which multiple companies come together to provide job opportunities in different fields. These combined events attract a wide array of talent and decrease the costs of hosting an event.

Benefits:

• Split costs and resources with other companies participating.
• Meet candidates in person to determine interest level and qualifications.

Pro Tip:

Ensure that participating companies target different applicant profiles to avoid competition and maximize the diversity of talent at the event.

6. Diversity and Inclusion Panels

Diversity and inclusion are critical for fostering innovation and broadening your talent pool. These panels can help your company connect with underrepresented groups and build a reputation as an inclusive employer.

Best Practices:

• Promote the event in diverse communities and offer materials in multiple languages.
• Include representatives from the groups you want to attract to ensure authenticity and sensitivity.

Word of Caution:

Do not come off as inauthentic by hiring experts or native speakers to help your outreach be culturally correct and relevant.

By implementing these creative recruiting event ideas, you will be able to create engaging experiences that attract top talent while showcasing your company's strengths and values.

Hosting A Recruitment Event

Most people, at some point, find themselves in the middle of a job recruitment process. And regardless of whether you’re a candidate browsing through job descriptions or an employer looking for the perfect candidate fit – the experience can be exhausting. 

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Virtual event solutions help you streamline recruitment and fill your open positions with more qualified candidates. And the right virtual event platform will significantly increase your chances of identifying dream candidates while building your employer brand.

When you decide you want to incorporate virtual events into your recruitment process, the question arises: how best to proceed? You have some options:

• Open-house recruitment events

• College and university recruiting events

• Networking parties

• Competitions

The choice is yours, and your virtual event format should align with your recruiting goals. Follow these steps to achieve success.

How to Host an Open House Recruitment Event

One of the most traditional options is to host an open house recruitment event. This is exactly like it sounds. For a couple of hours or days, you open your office and invite candidates to visit and learn more about your company, your employees, and your open positions. What’s the benefit of this method? Candidates get the experience of a physical open house without the travel. It’s one less barrier to getting candidates into your hiring pipeline. Your virtual open house can include:

• A virtual tour of your organization
• Video content that showcases your company culture
• 1-1 chats with Human Resources, recruiters, and hiring managers 
• Tools to upload resumes and apply to open positions online 

Tips for Success

There are multiple steps you can take to ensure your virtual open house is a success. Consider:

• Advertising your virtual open house through job boards, social media, and other online channels.
• Allowing candidates to attend virtual meetings as observers. Have someone assigned to engage with the candidates, welcome them, and to whatever extent possible integrate them into the meeting.
• Leveraging virtual engagement tools to personalize the open house experience by facilitating networking, providing relevant content, and sending in-event alerts to make the whole experience more meaningful.
• Hosting a virtual live chat event with current employees to answer candidates’ questions.
• Promoting your employer brand. For example, carry a consistent, on-brand look-and-feel throughout all elements of your virtual open house, including the pre-event promotion/messaging as well as post-event follow-up.
• Creating a virtual host for the main “hall” with a two-minute welcome message to enhance the user experience. The host can introduce your company and provide instructions on where to locate collateral, view webcasts, etc.

How to Virtually Recruit College and University Students

If you’re looking for young, ambitious candidates, recruiting at colleges and universities can deliver the best results.

Tips for Success

Most colleges and universities hold virtual campus career fairs and recruiting events that enable employers to show off their brand and interact with students, without requiring the students to travel. Ideas for successfully leveraging a virtual campus recruiting event include:

• Hosting an information session to introduce students to your organization, your industry, and any open positions.
• Scheduling online coffee chats to meet informally with small groups of students and introduce them to your company, the hiring process, career paths, work culture, etc.
• Holding a virtual professional development workshop to teach students new skills specific to your industry.
• Hosting a virtual alumni panel discussion, where students can ask questions of alumni who now work for your organization.
• Having an executive present on an industry-specific topic.  

How to Host a Virtual Networking Event

A virtual networking event is another great way to meet potential candidates.

Tips for Success

Without physical boundaries, virtual networking events will allow you to invite a large number of guests and are a useful way to kick-start relationships with potential candidates, introduce your products and services, and present your company as an employer of choice. Here are some ideas for creating a memorable virtual networking event: 

• Use social media channels such as LinkedIn to promote your virtual networking event. If your budget allows, leverage LinkedIn tools such as Sponsored Content, Sponsored InMail, and Dynamic Ads to drive awareness and registrations.
• Create a welcoming environment that incorporates your employer's brand. Leverage advertising panels, logo banners, environment-wide announcements, media walls (to categorize and display content visually against a “wall”), and green-screen videos of networking event hosts (ideally your company leadership) to generate a feeling of “live” excitement. 
• Invite your registrants to attend a VIP speaker presentation, followed by a live Q&A. Then, to facilitate networking, create breakout rooms and ask your attendees to join different discussions.
• Host a virtual round table discussion and invite attendees to join. Make sure you have a moderator in place to encourage engagement, facilitate icebreakers, etc. 
• Schedule a virtual speed networking event. Place attendees into breakout rooms for 5-10 minutes and then switch them to another room. 
• Launch real-time, environment-wide announcements throughout the event to inform (i.e., scheduled webcasts), engage (i.e., last chance to enter a contest), or drive attendees to different locations (i.e., a moderated chat in a designated networking lounge).
• Hold contests and prize giveaways. Include the incentive as part of your pre-event promotional campaign. For example,  promote a “scavenger hunt,” in which attendees need to visit various locations within the virtual environment to meet specific people. Keep the challenges simple to understand, fun to do, and scattered throughout the live day. Be sure to create a “Prize Booth” for the event and activate the “prize” tab in the environment to prominently display giveaways.
• Offer a quick tech tutorial. If your registrants are new to virtual networking events, provide them with an Attendee Guide early in the promotional period. For example, including the guide as part of your email campaign gives your audience a chance to review it and know what to expect during a virtual networking event. You can also invite attendees to experience the virtual event platform before the networking event takes place.  Allow them to familiarize themselves with the format ahead of time so they understand how to navigate the platform and take advantage of different experiences.  You may even want to offer some virtual content prior to the event itself to increase the likelihood that registrants will attend and encourage colleagues to join.

How to Host a Virtual Hiring Event Competition

What is the best way to select top talent among a sea of well-qualified candidates? Let them show off their skills in real-time challenges. 

Organizing friendly contests works great either as a standalone virtual event or as an additional attraction during other hiring events. 

Tips for Success

A great example of how to incorporate elements of competition into the talent recruitment process is Spotify. While looking for new programmers, the company decided to organize a hackathon, where attendees could demonstrate their skills. In addition, to attract a more diverse pool of candidates, they iterated on their hackathon concept and organized a DiversiFIGHT hackathon, where half of the participants were women. Not only did Spotify manage to fill its recruiting pipeline, but the event was also great for its employer brand.

Here are some ideas to create virtual competitions for hiring:

• Be clear that you’re hiring, but don’t make your event too serious. This is an opportunity to observe candidates’ skills, but more importantly, it allows you to show off your company’s spirit and present your organization as a fun, modern, and unique place to work. 
• Promote your event ahead of time. Use social media and leverage online communities to generate buzz. If budget permits, you can also use ads or contract with industry influencers to promote your hiring competition.
• Make sure your virtual event platform includes chat features. If people are competing as part of a team, they’ll need to be able to quickly and easily communicate with each other.
• Provide attendees with digital collaboration tools. Sometimes people want to show, not tell, so be sure your virtual event technology allows them to upload files, and participate via video, screenshare, etc.
• Build a central resource hub for your competition. Attendees should be able to easily access information such as rules, schedules, and FAQs. You can also include promotional content such as brand videos and executive interviews about the event.
• Plan non-competition activities. For example, include an executive welcome before your competition begins or host a virtual happy hour after the competition is over to give attendees a chance to network and ask questions.
• Send competitors a digital swag bag. This could include everything from company benefits brochures to phone and desktop wallpapers featuring company- or industry-specific imagery. 

Curious About Virtual Event Technology? 

We hope we’ve piqued your curiosity about virtual events and shown you just how effective they can be as recruitment tools. Learn more and request a virtual event platform demo.