There’s no doubt about it: virtual hiring took off during the pandemic of 2020 as the widespread adoption of remote work began shaping the world of work. But virtual recruiting shows no signs of stopping or slowing down. In fact, research shows that recruiters believe that virtual recruiting will become the norm even after the pandemic ends.
SourceForge recently caught up with Joe Matar, Vice President at Brazen, a leading virtual hiring event platform,talk about how the widespread adoption of remote work has accelerated adoption of virtual hiring events to help employers make sure they are connecting with and hiring top talent. He offers some insights into how virtual hiring events and virtual recruitment can help talent acquisition leaders well into the future.
What is virtual recruiting and how do virtual hiring fairs come into play?
Virtual recruiting is essentially going to where the job seekers are which is online and engaging with them on their terms. Doing so gives employers that adopt virtual recruiting a competitive advantage in the war for great talent. On the more tactical level, it is the process of using the internet and different technologies to attract, source, meet, review, and even hire candidates without having to meet face to face. Virtual recruiting isn’t new, and various components of the process have been taken online. But over the past few years, many technologies have been developed so that now it’s possible for the entire hiring process – including the interview, thanks to online video – to take place without any face to face interaction whatsoever.
And that’s where Brazen comes into play. Over 10 years ago, Brazen realized that one area where employers were struggling was in connecting with a large number of candidates in an easy-to-use, user-friendly way that also enabled their recruiters to connect one to one with job seekers online – like at a traditional career fair or networking event, but digitally. So, we led the industry in developing a technology platform that enabled the virtual career fair: an online hiring event that allows job seekers or students to register for and attend an event hosted by a large employer, university, organization, association, etc. completely online. What sets Brazen apart is that we have built a solution specifically for virtual events and we have tools that help recruiters host the best online job fairs for candidates, and that make it easy for talent acquisition teams to easily keep track of and follow up with top candidates. Plus, our flexible platform and tools can be used across the virtual hiring journey, from awareness to onboarding, and beyond.
Tell us about the team at Brazen and what types of clients you work with.
Brazen was founded 2007 and has been a pioneer in the online recruiting space ever since. Led by CEO Ed Barrientos along with Founder and President Ryan Healy, our mission is to help more people make easily meaningful connections, because we believe that everyone deserves a job they love. We are passionate about connecting employers and job seekers in the easiest way possible.
Brazen’s clients run the gamut, from talent acquisition and HR teams at Fortune 500 companies, to colleges and universities, to government and workforce development agencies, to job boards and membership groups. We work with companies like Spectrum, KPMG, CVSHealth, and AdventHealth, organizations like Hiring our Heroes, and universities such as University of Hawaii, University of Oregon, University of Southern California, and more.
As an industry leader, Brazen has a deep understanding of the virtual recruiting space, and we work directly with our clients to research and develop the solutions and tools they need to meet their evolving online event needs.
What does Brazen’s virtual career fair platform include?
Before I get into the details, I want to highlight the fact that a Brazen virtual hiring event is not the same as a Zoom chat. The experience couldn’t be more different. An event hosted on Brazen is an immersive experience for both candidates and recruiters, touches multiple stages in the recruiting process, and creates a seamless candidate journey whereas a Zoom chat is transactional and just one point in time in the overall hiring process. Okay, so back to the details. At a Brazen virtual career fair, employers can customize their experience to create a branded event, create booths that share helpful information about an organization or job opportunity, enable attendees to connect directly with hiring managers for text, audio or video chat, host live broadcasts to all event attendees, allow employers to connect with candidates via scheduled chats, host webinars, create custom landing pages to promote their events, and integrate with your ATS and CRM. Employers can rate and group candidates after each chat to enable quick follow up, and even email hiring managers, team members, or even candidates, directly from the event. You can even integrate your calendar to enable scheduling follow-up interviews with qualified candidates.
What challenges does the talent acquisition and recruiting world face that Brazen helps to solve?
Today’s talent acquisition teams face various challenges as they seek to find top talent and retain them. A company’s talent is one of the main drivers of success, so talent acquisition teams are always seeking help on how to continually improve. And virtual recruiting technology such as Brazen helps TA teams improve in key areas:
- Removes geographic barriers to finding and connecting with top talent. As the competition for top talent rises, and remote work has become accessible across most industries in the U.S., an organization’s job market is truly not limited by geography anymore. In a world where many jobs can be done completely remote, virtual career fairs help recruiters find talent anywhere.
- Helps reduce time to hire. With a virtual career fair platform, a TA team can quickly connect with and qualify top candidates to move them on to interviews, and keeping much of this process online can reduce the over all time to hire – a great outcome for any organization!
- Enables reduced costs. Another area where virtual recruiting technology helps TA teams is by reducing costs, particularly travel and in-person event costs. From flights to hotel accommodations to event space and giveaways, attending in-person hiring events gets expensive, yet it has been a critical part of the talent acquisition process. Virtual career fairs help employers retain the benefits of these events while reducing the overall number of in-person, logistically complicated events to host or attend.
- Gives access to a more diverse candidate pool. One perhaps surprising benefit of virtual hiring events is that they are enabling employers to better meet their diversity, equity, and inclusion hiring goals, as many Brazen clients have shared. For a variety of reasons, virtual events can be more accessible to a broader range of potential candidates. Plus, because they are convenient to host and to attend, it’s easy for employers and organizations to offer them in a range of times, and for broad or niche audiences, depending on their needs.
- Allows more team involvement in the process. Virtual hiring events can also be a great way to connect more of your organization in the hiring process. For example, a company that hosts its own virtual career fair can easily and affordably involve hiring managers or representatives from across the business – from a range of locations, departments, disciplines, and backgrounds. This is a win-win for both employers and candidates.
- Enables tracking and insights into performance. Virtual career fairs also enable a talent acquisition team to get insights into event performance. For example, Brazen’s analytics and dashboards give you real-time insight into your events so you can track sign ups, attendance rate, chat analytics, and more.
You mentioned that research shows virtual recruiting is likely to remain popular going forward. Talk a little about this research and what it means for organizations today.
It’s clear that the pandemic of 2020 drove adoption of remote work in a way never yet seen – that is already shaping the workforce of the future, with major employers announcing permanent remote work options, which will impact the overall workforce for companies large to small, everywhere.
Now, with the adoption of virtual recruiting, recruiters are saying virtual is here to stay. A recent Brazen study showed that 96% of talent acquisition teams plan to continue using virtual hiring events in the future, post-pandemic.
About Brazen
Brazen’s virtual hiring event platform can transform your online recruiting process. With over 10 years of experience helping talent acquisition teams connect, engage, and hire top talent, Brazen is the most complete virtual event solution on the market. Some of the top brands in the world use Brazen to target specific talent pools and host massive virtual hiring events, with the ultimate goal of building relationships with quality candidates.
Related Categories