Job Fairs can be great networking opportunities for both employers and employees. They can get your name in front of the right potential employees. This article explains why small businesses should seek top talent at a job fair:
Access to Many Qualified Candidates
A huge benefit for small businesses participating in job fairs is that they can provide you with instant access to qualified candidates. There are many sorts of job fairs, for example universities and colleges hold career fairs for their students. There are also Community Job Fairs, Commercial Specialty Fairs and Commercial Professional Fairs. All these events give businesses the chance to recruit new staff specifically trained to excel in subject areas. As a small business you can save money advertising for the perfect employee and instead scout at job fairs to increase the number of resumes and applications from qualified candidates who you deem might be a good match for your small business.
A Human Face
Another major benefit of recruiting at job fairs for a small business is that instead of selecting candidates by flicking through impersonal resumes, meeting candidates at job fair allows you to encounter potential employees in person from the very beginning. This means you can immediately deem whether you believe those candidates a would be a good fit as well as reduce wasted time setting up interviews for unqualified candidates or employees that just don't match personality-wise with your small business ethos or fit in with your team.
A job fair is a very effective method for your small business to line up dozens of potential employees and conduct numerous short interviews over the course of a day, or even in a few hours, so that you can select candidates from a specialized pool. It allows you to evaluate from the get-go how well you interact with candidates and what sort of personality they have.
Once you have undergone that process of face-to face meetings that instantaneously allows you to put a human face on resumes, you can immediately assess which candidates you want to give extra attention as you can quickly ascertain which are those that best mesh with your small business goals and the positions available.
Meet with Non-Traditional Candidates
Although as a small business you may initially enter the job fair with a very specific candidate profile in mind, such as an MBA graduate with a charismatic personality, or a computer science major who is team-minded, an unexpected benefit of job fairs is that your small business may also find and talk to 'non-traditional' candidates who turn out to be an ideal match. Surprisingly, sometimes candidates who do not tick all the boxes in terms of degrees or other traits may turn out to be the right match. For example, you might meet an English Literature Master’s Graduate who has also been working part-time, or prior to their current degree, and acquired a rich as well as diverse skill-set that not only meets your small business's needs, but exceeds them.
