Virtual career fairs are the future

This year, poly-E-fair recorded a high increase in participation with 30 companies and almost 1,500 visitors. Being a pioneer within academia, the Corona-related digitalisation gave the project a boost and contributed significantly to the great success of the 2020 edition. The organising team is pleased to have provided the ETH community with an opportunity to exchange ideas with potential employers during this extraordinary time. The ambitious project aims to be an excellent example of a successful digital solution. Such virtual formats will hopefully be increasingly recognised and used in the future.

The live support team of poly-E-fair witnessed the highly interactive nature of the event. This included visiting company booths and live streams, using the chat rooms, asking interesting questions, exchanging information and sending applications. The average time spent on the platform was one hour.

Searching for the perfect match

The diversity of the participants is one of the many added values of virtual career fairs. Not only did international companies take part, but also did interested individuals from around the world. Thanks to poly-E-fair’s virtual nature, it is easier to identify common interests. Moreover, companies could use the participant profiles to interact with targeted visitors. This, together with the direct exchange of application documents, allows a more efficient job search compared to traditional career fairs.

In addition to the anonymous quantitative data collection, qualitative surveys were conducted, where companies and participants had the opportunity to give detailed feedback. In total, 18 companies and 147 visitors participated in the two corresponding surveys. 82% of these companies stated that they were planning a follow-up with participants. 89% were considering hiring a person they had been in touch with during the e-fair. Besides that, the main reasons for visitors to participate were (multiple choice was possible): current job search (71%), interest in participating companies (44%) and interest in virtual career fairs (30%). The following feedback was received from companies regarding their primary motivations for poly-E-fair: 31% are always interested in highly qualified personnel, 23% are particularly looking for young talent, and another 23% have a specific interest in ETH graduates. Further details on the analytics are published on the external page poly-E-fair website.

Ideal for information and networking

An important partner and exhibitor of poly-E-fair is the ETH Career Center. Anja Pauling and Lorena Coletti were present in the chat room during the Career Center’s pre-recorded keynote speech, which included valuable tips for handling job interviews successfully. Their video had over 600 views, and in their live chat, they counted about 200 engaged visitors. They are satisfied with this result: «We were able to clarify questions that are very common in our consultations, such as where to prepare for online tests for recruitment, how to prepare good questions for the interview or how to answer questions about strengths/weaknesses. With just one click, the participants thus benefited from important inputs for preparing for upcoming job interviews.» The ETH Career Center sees a great chance to reach students through these new channels and considers the poly-E-fair ideal for information and networking.