Supporting Diversity and Inclusion at Virtual Recruiting Events

We've talked a lot about how virtual recruiting gives businesses a better and more engaging applicant experience while enabling them to go well beyond the geographical boundaries of conventional in-person recruiting events. Virtual recruiting events should be a crucial part of your diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging strategy since they influence underrepresented populations, one of the sometimes-neglected advantages of this type of recruiting.

What are virtual recruiting events?

Recruitment events serve as a type of recruitment marketing strategy intended to cultivate a more personal relationship with candidates. There are many various types of recruiting events (for example, career fairs and job fairs), but they all aim to attract more quality candidates and boost favorable company branding.

How do virtual recruiting events support diversity and inclusion?

The reasons why a job seeker from underrepresented groups would prefer (or be more likely to engage) with a potential employer through virtual recruiting are numerous and diverse. Here are a few most common aspects:

Reach

Organizing or attending in-person career fairs naturally limits your audience, location, talent pool, and groups who will be invited and able to participate in your application process. In contrast, virtual hiring events greatly expand your reach, enabling you to offer more opportunities to a more diverse group of people.

Flexibility

Virtual hiring events make it easier for high-quality candidates to attend, network, and engage because they don't require travel plans, time off from work, childcare, and other constraints associated with the traditional hiring event or onsite interview process. That is why virtual hiring events, recruiting event software, and online interviewing tools allow a broader range of individuals to attend your hiring events and avoid delivering a poor candidate experience merely due to logistical concerns.

Location

You can connect with diverse prospects even if you don't live in a particularly diverse region by conducting a recruiting event online. That doesn't simply apply to those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds; perhaps there aren't many women working within the particular field in your region, making it difficult to include them in your hiring process through conventional channels.

Accessibility

It's crucial to consider the diverse experiences of people with disabilities while discussing accessibility. Many persons with physical limitations might not be as willing to travel, even within the same city, for an in-person hiring event. In-person recruiting events may be as difficult for candidates with sensory impairments, chronic illnesses, or other conditions. All candidates can easily participate in virtual events from a location where they feel safe and supported.

Sensory

Large-scale live career fairs can result in sensory overload. Virtual events allow qualified applicants negatively affected by this type of sensory input to take control of their environment and reduce recognized triggers and distractions. One of the main questions that organizers should ask themselves when hosting a hiring event is how to conduct virtual recruitment and how to source diverse talent to support diversity and inclusion.

Let’s look at some recruiting event ideas for your next fair.

Representation matters

Choosing who will represent your business and being aware of sharing diverse voices across color, gender, ethnicity, disability, and other social and cultural identifiers are essential components of inclusive events. Frequently, companies choose which employees represent them at events depending on their availability and schedule. By hosting events online, you may reduce travel expenses and give more members of your organization the opportunity to attend and offer their opinions. The management of the virtual job fair is greatly simplified by the b2match recruiting event software, which enables all registered company members to be identified as company representatives.

Attract a diverse candidate pool

Use inclusive language that invites candidates in at the beginning of the hiring process to foster a welcoming atmosphere. Inform team members who are creating event descriptions and invitations to avoid gendered language, jargon, and idioms that may imply exclusion to possible applicants. Event descriptions are a crucial marketing tool, just like job listings, and should convey an inclusive message if you want to hire a more diverse staff.

Maximize accessibility

It goes without saying that your virtual recruitment event should have accessibility features for job seekers. One way to make events more understandable and accessible online is to add captions when they are being broadcast live. These are essential for those who require them to participate, including deaf or hard-of-hearing users, as well as for those who like to watch videos with captions. Adding captions is not only crucial for candidates with hearing disabilities, but it also improves information retention and viewer engagement. Add in color contrast, text-to-speech, and other such features.

Additionally, the event's virtual nature makes it feasible for individuals with disabilities to attend. Offer as many accessibility features as possible to accommodate your different candidates.

Concentrate on a specific subgroup

Think about holding virtual events that highlight particular diverse subgroups within a talent pool, for example people with ADHD and autism or other neurodivergence. Candidates from underrepresented groups might feel more at ease participating in virtual gatherings where they know they won't stand out or run the risk of being stigmatized. Similarly, because they are aware of how differently they interact with the world than neurotypical people, people with neurodivergence may feel more at ease at events that are expressly catered to them. Even passive prospects might gain from these additional arrangements and considerations because personalization is essential when creating an excellent candidate experience for your target job candidates.

Make diverse matches

Networking is one of the main reasons participants attend an event, but sometimes the process can be challenging, especially when you have a diverse candidate pool. This part of your virtual recruitment strategy requires support from a recruitment event software to ensure proper networking matches.

The b2match recruitment event platform makes the matchmaking process easy. Candidates can create and customize their job seeker's profile to appeal to potential employers. They can include a picture and a brief introduction bio, and answer questions about experience, education, and other qualifications companies may consider when hiring. The job seeker's profile should be as detailed as possible because b2match's AI Recommendation System employs complex algorithms to analyze large amounts of data and recommend interesting student profiles to each company.

The next step is finding a match. b2match allows both companies and applicants to use the search tool and filters to connect or arrange a meeting to find the ideal match. As the virtual job fair organizer, you get to determine whether employers send meeting requests to job seekers or the other way around. Additionally, you can establish booking rules and select from a variety of requesting and scheduling modes.

You can optimize the advantages of your employer branding by understanding how virtual recruiting affects the candidate experience for diverse people and adhering to the best practices we stated above, but your efforts shouldn't stop there. The truth is that only understanding the importance of virtual recruitment diversity alone won't "fix" your company's diversity and inclusion problems. You should foster a solid corporate culture and values where prospective employees from various backgrounds and life experiences can flourish.

Additionally, your hiring cannot be inclusive if your corporate culture is not. You can affect progress by having difficult conversations and speaking up for people who might not be present at the table, in the room, or even in the building.