Do career fairs still have value?
Are you participating in career fairs? Now more than ever, employers need to sell themselves to their potential hires. Continue reading this blog post to learn if career fairs still add value to recruiting.
In today's tight applicant market, job seekers are in charge. To meet their demands, recruiters have set aside old red flags and even some traditional sourcing methods. But do career fairs still make the cut?
Candidates want to be courted and, now more than ever, employers need to sell themselves to potential hires. Many young candidates, in particular, hope to land at a cutting-edge company — and a booth at a job fair may seem a bit old fashioned unless employers make a few modifications. Though a career fair is not always enough on its own, many employers have found ways to use this old-school technique to send today's job seekers the right messages about their organizations.
Do career fairs actually net hires?
Vicki Salemi, career expert for Monster, doesn't think job fairs are an effective use of employer resources. "Generally speaking, career fairs — as a standalone — do not net talent," she told HR Dive in an email. "For the job seeker, it can be challenging to stand out among stacks of resumes and, for the employer, it's not time well spent." A former financial services corporate recruiter, she said she rarely made a hire from a fair.
But they can be useful for specific industries, roles and skill sets, she added. Employers can maximize the potential of a job fair by using them in conjunction with other innovative hiring solutions as part of an integrated hiring mix. "One way employers can maximize their time at a career fair is to pre-screen resumes of candidates so that they can arrange on-site interviews," Salemi said.
Mike Cooke, account executive at Montage, said that the traditional career fair has become outdated. "Consider the amount of time and money that is typically spent on a traditional career fair," he said to HR Dive in an email. Costs can include sponsorship fees, travel expenses and swag, plus the amount of time recruiters are spending at the event and sifting through resumes received — often with little positive return on investment. "Additionally, if a company isn't able to engage candidates' pre-event, the recruiter could very well be spending face to face time with a candidate that isn't a fit," he added.
Fairs can be a challenge for candidates, as well, Salemi said: "It's often hard to make an impact with a 30-second introduction to each employer — and that can be draining." Generally, recruiters should look at the career fair as only one aspect of their hiring toolkit.
Raising awareness instead of reaping resumes
For many businesses, career fairs offer an opportunity to showcase what they do and how job seekers can be a part of the team. They can illustrate what may be available to both students and those looking to change their career trajectory, particularly for employers offering jobs that do not require a traditional degree. For organizations not known as a hiring player in certain disciplines, especially tech, exposure can offer options. At a tech-oriented career fair, employers who may not have been considered in the past by any tech workers can entice them to look closer to home before jockeying for a slot in Silicon Valley.
"Career fairs are a valuable way to drive awareness for companies across a large subset of potential talent," Mike Rogers, senior director of maintenance and refrigeration at Tyson Foods, told HR Dive in an email. For Rogers, awareness is invaluable; industrial maintenance, a trade specialty with 85 different skills, has a critical skills gap. Nearly 40% of his maintenance and refrigeration hourly team members are 50-years old or older, keeping his team on the hunt for ways to build out the talent pipeline for trade-focused jobs.
Tech takes career fairs to the next level
To offer today's job seeker the recruiting experience they want, virtual career fairs are taking off. Connecting through video saves candidates and employers time and money. Individual connections are made in a private setting, without others vying for attention. These types of fairs cast a wider net to help meet inclusion efforts as well, Cooke said. "Virtual career fairs allow recruiters to reach a larger and more diverse pool of candidates — including students located on smaller and more rural campuses — that they wouldn't normally have access to due to time, cost and travel restrictions."
Joe Milner, talent acquisition manager at Pearson, worked with Montage's recruiting technology for their own virtual career fair. To attract a more diverse level of qualified entry-level talent, their hiring managers were able to interview a number of candidates at a quick pace. "Because they were able to talk with such a wide variety of candidates, our hiring managers were able to make job offers to candidates they normally wouldn't have spoken with or even considered at a traditional job fair or through other recruiting tactics," Milner said in an email.
The other experts agreed. Virtual career fairs save time and money and can be an effective way for employers and job seekers to connect, Salemi said, and while they don't work well as a stand-alone strategy, an integrated hiring mix is incomplete without them. Gen Z candidates are digital natives, so meeting these job seekers where they're already living — on their mobile devices and laptops — will be the best approach in attracting them to your company, Cooke added.
SOURCE: O'Donnell, R. (20 May 2019) "Do career fairs still have value?" (Web Blog Post). Retrieved from https://www.hrdive.com/news/do-career-fairs-still-have-value/554107/
3 ways anxiety can hold back your employees’ careers
According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, nearly six in 10 American workers report anxiety impacts their workplace performance. Continue reading this blog post to learn more about workplace anxiety.
Employers want their employees to grow and succeed at their jobs. Unfortunately, there are a variety of external and psychological obstacles that can stand in the way of employees reaching their full potential. While most workers would like nothing better than to perform well on the job, anxiety can prevent them from doing so.
Anxiety disorders are extremely common: They affect 40 million adults in the U.S. each year, and nearly six in 10 American workers report anxiety impacts their workplace performance, according to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America. A study in the academic journal Anxiety found the economic effects of this mental health condition are huge — costing employers almost $35 billion from lost or reduced productivity in the workplace, the study says. The good news is 80% of employees treated for mental health problems report improvements in their job satisfaction and productivity.
For employers to mitigate the impact anxiety has on their employees, it’s important to understand the form it takes in the workplace. Anxiety often takes shape in various thinking traps that can sabotage an employee’s growth. Three of the most common traps are social comparisons, personalization and overmagnification.
To explore how these thinking traps manifest in the workplace, let’s consider a scenario in which an employee sees a co-worker gets a promotion instead of them.
The social comparison trap. The research is clear that comparing yourself to others is bad for your mental health. However, that doesn’t stop people — especially those with anxiety — from doing just that. A co-worker’s promotion can lead an employee to leap to the conclusion they must be inferior to their colleague. In reality, there’s no way employees can fairly compare themselves to a co-worker. Their experiences, personalities and skills are different. Employees able to avoid that comparison trap might, instead, keep the focus on themselves, evaluating the growth they’ve achieved over the past year and determining how they can continue to improve in the year ahead.
The personalization trap. It’s hard for some employees to recognize not everything is about them. The co-worker who earned the promotion may have gotten the job because they were simply a better fit; that doesn’t diminish the talents and abilities of those who weren’t chosen for the position. Rather than assume the worst of themselves, employees could look at the situation more objectively and recognize that their co-worker may not be better than them, just different.
The overmagnification trap. Blowing things out of proportion is another thinking pattern with a destructive effect. Being passed over for a promotion can expand to a sense of being permanently, hopelessly, bad at one’s job. Instead of being able to parse out the specific reasons why the promotion didn’t go their way, employees who overmagnify convince themselves that they are not only unqualified for the promotion, but they’ll never get a promotion and their career is doomed — so why even try? To keep those overblown feelings at bay, a better approach is to stay focused on the specific and transient nature of what has just happened. Being passed over hurts now, but it won’t hurt forever. Not getting this particular job says nothing about the person’s ability to get other jobs. It may mean that they are missing certain skills or experience, but it doesn’t mean they will always lack them.
Workplace culture and practices can either exacerbate or diminish the self-sabotaging thinking traps that go hand in hand with anxiety. Some effective strategies that can help foster a positive work environment for all employees, but especially those who tend toward anxiety, include:
Create a collaborative workplace. Workplace collaboration helps employees feel valued for their contributions and allows them to see how their skills are important to achieving success for their team or company. It also provides the opportunity to learn from other employees and appreciate what they bring to the table, rather than viewing them as their competition.
Promote transparency. Employees who are kept in the loop, who understand their role, the criteria for what promotions are based on, and understand what they can do to get to the next level are more trusting of their leaders. Be particularly sensitive to what employees may be experiencing during annual performance reviews and make sure to overcommunicate during those times.
Offer tools and services. Providing programs and services to help reduce stress and anxiety can be beneficial for all employees. These can include subsidizing gym memberships, offering yoga classes, encouraging “mind vacation” breaks throughout the day, providing online programs that guide employees through mindful meditations or other well-being exercises.
Model self-care. Employees are more likely to engage in self-care at work if they see their supervisors practicing it, not just encouraging it. If a meditation class is offered in the workplace, employees are more likely to take part if their managers are taking time out of their day to participate as well. Similarly, organization-wide activities, such as a mid-day walk, allow employees to see management promote the message that self-care is a workplace priority.
Given the high number of working Americans with anxiety conditions, easing their anxieties and helping them avoid those thinking traps is good for business. It will improve employees’ overall well-being, workplace satisfaction and professional growth.
SOURCE: Parks, A. (5 March 2019) "3 ways anxiety can hold back your employees’ careers" (Web Blog Post). Retrieved from https://www.benefitnews.com/opinion/3-ways-anxiety-can-hold-back-your-employees-careers