How To Use Virtual Summits to Recruit Skilled Trade and Maintenance Workers

In the pre-COVID era, job fairs and trade expos presented abundant opportunities for industrial businesses to hire trade and maintenance workers. 

But with the virus making social gatherings unsafe, firms have to look at new avenues to hire talented workers. 

This could not have come at a worse time for industries – in the US alone, the current shortage of skilled workers is at half a million, expected to peak at around two million within this decade. In such dire straits, virtual job summits may hold the answer. 

Why Use a Virtual Job Summit?

In the new normal forced upon us by the pandemic, video communications reign supreme. From basic video calls to office conferences, award ceremonies, international summits, art exhibitions, trade expos, everything has gone virtual. 

So, why not use the same proven technology for recruiting skilled and scarce talent from the trade and maintenance industry? The advantages of a virtual job summit are pretty obvious: 

• No risk of spreading the COVID-19 virus

• No risk of violating local quarantine restrictions

• The ability to attract talent from all over the country/world

• Less expensive than a real-life job fair

How to Create an Effective Virtual Job Summit

A successful virtual summit has many moving parts – webinars, live Q&A sessions, tech demos, virtual exhibits, sponsorships, and networking chat features are all great examples. 

To get them all working together as a coherent whole, you need a capable online event management platform. vFairs can provide that platform, but the content that resides on top has to come from the firm looking to host the fair and do the hiring. 

This involves the following steps: 

Create a Roadmap

The first step is to create the broad outlines of the virtual job summit project. Get an experienced person to head it – preferably someone with an HR background. 

Focus on the target demographic, which, in an industrial context is usually skilled tradespersons, maintenance technicians, and other workers with industrial engineering backgrounds.

Pick the Right Platform

With an offline expo or summit, you would look to partner with a reputed event management company. Likewise, to host a virtual summit, you need a technology partner that can deliver state-of-the-art online features.

Think app integrations, 3D virtual venues, live help desks, video demos of workplaces and production technology, interactive webinars, advanced customization options, and reliable customer support. 

With a platform like vFairs, which combines all these features with an excellent track record and experience hosting events across the globe, half the battle is already won.

Create Engaging Content

With the current shortage of skilled talent, industrial firms have to pull out all the stops to make the virtual job fair an effective recruitment tool. 

Book charismatic operations managers, operators, and maintenance techs to host webinars and take questions from summit attendees. 

Consider creating informational videos that highlight the best aspects of working at your firm. For example, check out this video from Limble CMMS:

Industrial firms can harness the superior 3D virtual reality technology available on vFairs to showcase virtual workspaces, machines, staff facilities, and more advanced features.

Market the Event

A virtual job summit is only effective if you manage to attract a large number of attendees from your target demographics. The importance of strategic marketing cannot be overstated in this context. 

vFairs can help here, with custom domains, branded landing pages, and targeted email campaigns for an industrial job fair. You can also consider placing ads on social media, LinkedIn, at trade schools, and online forums. 

Build and Host an Interactive Virtual Summit

The vFairs Event Builder feature gives you complete control of all aspects of your virtual job summit. Bring all the content created across the previous steps to a single unified platform with minimal effort. You can also set up chat rooms, payment gateways, live polls, and other integrations. 

If you do the necessary homework, you can reap the rewards come the day of the summit. Don’t forget to have an HR team on standby to conduct live interviews of promising candidates. 

Actively Seek Feedback from Attendees

Ideally, you don’t want your virtual job summit to be a one-time experience. Given the unsteady future of the pandemic, one cannot reliably expect a return to the “old normal” any time soon. 

Virtual summits are an important part of the future. And if you want to improve with each iteration of your job summit, you need feedback from attendees. 

Use polls and optional surveys to gain vital insights regarding the popularity of specific features. Ask which features job seekers would like to see added in future summits. 

Perform In-depth Data Analysis

A virtual summit is no minor undertaking – it pays to keep track of your RoI when you host such events frequently. vFairs has some convenient features here as well. 

A dashboard gives you real-time access to key metrics like attendance rates and user engagement levels across the different features available on the virtual summit. 

You also get full access to all event stats and KPIs neatly packaged into a post-event report. Filled with granular data and strategic insights, the report is fully compliant with top CRM platforms for easy integration. 

Using these features, you can gain unprecedented access and visibility to the key factors of your virtual summit. Leverage the data for improved efficiency of future employment virtual summits on vFairs!

Conclusion

Skilled operators and maintenance workers are essential for the long-term success and viability of any industrial manufacturing business. 

With the ongoing restrictions on offline job fairs and expos, it is high time that organizations headed online for their recruitment needs. 

A virtual job fair, powered by a versatile and stable platform like vFairs can help many firms ease the crisis caused by vacant job openings in the industrial sector. 

If you are looking for more detailed guidelines on online summit, check out our complete guide to virtual summits.