How To Promote Your Company At a Career Fair
Simply Hired Staff
How do you make your company more attractive to college students and new grads at a college fair? The answer lies in how you promote your company. To have a successful time at a college career effort, recruiters should plan to continuously promote their company before, during and after the event. Choosing your first job out of college or the perfect summer internship takes a lot of consideration, so recruiters should make sure they’re promoting their company every step of a student’s decision process.
Before the Career Fair
Before you start promoting, check what open job reqs you have and decide if you want to focus on that particular group. For example, if you have engineering or sales openings, you’ll probably want to gear your promotions with those particular students in mind. With a focus, you can choose the right swag and message for marketing collateral you want when designing your booth.
Plan to start promoting at least a month before the career fair. If you have money in your budget, most colleges offer sponsorship packages, and you can be promoted in a school-wide e-mail blasts. Many college professional groups and clubs offer sponsorship in their e-mail blasts, too. Make announcements on your corporate social media feeds and blogs, because students interested in your company might be following you and will appreciate the announcement.
During the Career Fair
According to “How Companies Attract the Best Talent,” by Sanjeev Agrawal, the top three things millennials look for in an employer are People & Culture Fit, Career Potential, and Work/Life Balance. The staff that you bring to the career fair should be knowledgeable on these areas, as most of the questions will probably be about them. Also, if most of your job opening are in one department, it would be smart to bring someone from that department to the fair, not just recruiters. This way students will get first-hand knowledge on what it’s like to work in that particular department, not just the generic sales pitch from a recruiter.
Another tip from Agrawal is that most millennials hear about companies from their friends. An engaging way to promote your company is to offer an incentive for college students to share their experiences at your table on social media. It could be a photo of them with your company branding. Another idea is an online quiz on what role at your company fits them best and give them the option to share their results on their social media account. Having something fun, relevant and shareable will encourage college students to talk about your company with their friends.
After the Career Fair
Before you blast a generic email to all of the contacts you collected at the career fair, contact the students with the most potential first. Students will respond more to a sincere, personalized e-mail from a real recruiter or employee versus an e-mail from an HR alias. You should include jobs that might interest the student and follow up with any more information on questions they had when you met them. Make yourself available to the student if they have any further questions about the job or the company.
For the email that goes out to all of your new leads from the job fair, include recruiter contact information, where they can find a list of jobs, and links to your university recruiting social media accounts if you have them. Similar to during the career fair, it might be helpful to add an incentive if they share any of the jobs openings your company has on their personal social media accounts. College students are more likely to spread the word about your company if you make it easy and fun for them.
