Rakuna 2021 Student Survey reveals valuable insights: 90% of respondents prefer to use email and phone as the favorite professional communication channel and hear from recruiters within one week after the first interaction.
Expectations go both ways, as recruiters expect students to follow up with interviewers after career fairs, students look forward to hearing from recruiters. Thus, timely post-career fair communication can guarantee positive candidate experience and give you an upper hand in winning top talents. Understanding the importance of communication after career fairs, we have gathered the following tactics to help you maintain candidate excitement and engagement throughout your talent pipeline.
I. How To Plan A Good Post-Career Fair Communication Strategy?
1. Plan Your Candidate Segmentation
After meeting hundreds of students at a career fair, it is easy to feel overwhelmed and not knowing who to follow up with. Thus, To not fall into a total post-career fair shambles, plan your candidate segmentation ahead.
To segment candidates, recruiters need mobile recruiting apps to store and organize candidate resumes and contacts in real-time at career fair. When the career fair ends and you start planning your post-career fair communication strategy, you will have at your disposal a streamlined hub of candidate information to quickly determine who is a potential employee for your open positions and needs following up proactively.
2. Follow-up Email Is A Courtesy
Follow-up email is a staple tactic in any post-career fair communication strategy. This tactic should be applied to all candidates that you met the fairs. This is an opportunity to go over important things with prospective applicants as either a preparation for their advancement in the recruiting process or an act to showcase your company culture.
Acknowledge them will earn you a plus point in candidate experience. You can mention some of the followings:
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A quick personal introduction as well as your position and responsibility at the company
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Current opening opportunities that your organization is looking to fill from candidates at the career fair
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A recruitment process with timeline
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Additional information about your company, such as websites or social media account
Timely communication is the secret to win top talents. Adopt technology to send automated follow-up emails right after career fair so that you won’t have any talents falling through the crack of a lengthy manual sourcing process.
For further information on potential technologies to consider for your team, you can check out this article: Top 04 Technologies To Accelerate Your Campus Recruiting Process
3. Sell Your Employer Brand
According to a recently published Rakuna Annual Student Survey Report, more than 50% of the surveyed students take employer branding into consideration when weighing a job offer.
Employer branding is a must that should be incorporated into your post-communication strategy.
At career fairs, you can handout giveaways to students visiting your booth to keep them reminded of your company and promote your employer branding. A quick tip to stand out with career fair handouts is that your career fair handouts should bear a statement that reflects your company’s core values. For example, if you want your prospective candidates to think of your company as a socially conscious, innovative company, give out environment-friendly items.
This tactic does not end there. With the contacts of hundreds of potential prospects at hand, you can use them to spread company brand and value. Even when they do not become your colleagues, they can still be your customers. Do keep them informed of your company’s projects and news through newsletter emails; you can even ask for their feedbacks or reviews for your company’s products.
4. Keep The Relationships Warm – You Never Know What Prospective Candidates Can Bring You
Angie Verros, founder of Vaia Talent and former talent acquisition leader at high-growth organizations, said “I’ve maintained relationships with a lot of the candidates I’ve met throughout my career. You never know where those relationships will take you.”
Do keep in contact with your former potential candidates with the simple use of social media. LinkedIn is a great platform to keep in touch in a professional way. You can congratulate your former potential candidates when they get a new position, or answer them if they need help. Recruitment is human-centric after all. Return to your previously assessed candidates will help you reduce your time and effort on sourcing new talents and develop yourself as a representative of an open-minded company that does not hesitate to support talents.
II. Template For A Standard Follow-up Email
Among all the advice above, writing follow-up email to your prospects is a vital step. According to Rakuna Survey, 2 in 3 surveyed students prefer to hear from recruiters within one week from the first interaction and 3 out of 3 prefer email as the main communication channel. Crafting email can be a time-consuming task, especially when you have a very tight schedule to send them out. Hence, we would like to present a sample template so you can utilize for your post-career fair communication.
Dear _____
Nice to meet you at [Event Name]. I am ____, the [insert position] of ABC company. I would like to thank you for visiting our booth. The fair was fun and productive, wasn’t it? I really enjoyed sharing about my company and learning about your career aspirations. I would like to reiterate important points that you may need:
[List out the positions your company is looking to fill from the career fair]The recruitment process will run from DD/MM/YY to DD/MM/YY. There are _____ rounds. The detailed timeline is [insert the detailed timeline] [Links to further information about your company]
If you have any further inquiry, you can reach me via this email.
Thank you once again for being interested in our company.
We look forward to seeing you in our application process.
Best regards,
Conclusion
Communication is always critical in recruitment. It can contribute to candidate experience and brand recognition. The key tactic is to avoid letting your prospects wait by sending follow-up emails after career fairs as soon as possible and do not forget to maintain your relationships with previously assessed candidates.
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