New technology alert: video virtual career fairs

Maybe I was wrong about virtual career fairs. Today, collegegrad.com launched video virtual career fairs. It's a pretty scrappy execution - although I must admit that it is fun to play both videos of CollegeGrad president Brian Krueger at once in sort of a surreal, Brady-Bunch-intro-esque feature. But I'm guessing that this is a light first version, and if it's successful, it will be expanded and hopefully polished a bit more.

To get back to my original post, I thought the first iteration of virtual career fairs were not much better than a company's own career website in terms of effectiveness. They were the equivalent of "come to our career fair site, look at the fancy brand our agency produced, and then apply like you normally would with no hope of hearing back from anyone." Not an ideal experience.

But immersive environments like Second Life, where you can interact with your audience in a way, hold potential for the future. Especially if you can get someone to virtually do the job before they actually do it, giving you perhaps the ultimate try-before-you-buy prescreening tool.

A video response to employer submitted questions, as CollegeGrad has launched, isn't such a bad thing either. In effect, it's a digitization of an actual career fair to an expanded audience. For employers, it could broaden the pool of candidates they interact with beyond just local or elite school talent, reduce their travel budgets and ensure that their most important questions get answered before putting someone in front of a hiring manager. For job seekers, it could allow them to express themselves in a more meaningful way than they could on a resume and get considered for opportunities they wouldn't normally be considered for.

Whether CollegeGrad.com will drive this functionality to the finish line remains to be seen, but it could be a great first step in the right direction.

Comments

[Stephen Fogarty]

Hey Dave...

We recently ran with a virtual career fair hosted by PRWeek and it was super impressive. We actually used PRWeek's tools to create a SecondLife type experience for job seekers in our industry. I ended up talking to a lot of people but most noteably a guy from one of our major competitors in India who said he was impressed that we utilized this technology and otherwise would not have been interested...but was suprised his organization had not thought of it first....I think being first to market applies to us, in recruiting, as well as it does for tech folks..

Peace...your local but global creative talent recruiting dude..

Steve
Recruiting Revolution...

[Brian Krueger]

Hi Dave,

I'm glad you enjoyed the Virtual Career Fair, although I have to admit I didn't think of playing both videos at the same time. Very cool. :)

Yes, we will continue to evolve this technology. Stay tuned and keep checking back. It's continuing to evolve and we want to be at the forefront. I encourage other employers to join us on this incredible journey!