Singapore Workforce Development Agency (WDA) Hosts First Ever Virtual Career Fair

About Singapore Workforce Development Agency (WDA)

The Singapore Workforce Development Agency (WDA) aims to empower job seekers and employees with the best tools, aligned with evolving labour market trends, to boost their employability. With their core objectives including supporting industry growth by providing outstanding talent, bridging structural skills gaps, and consistently elevating industry standards by maintaining a steady supply of well-trained manpower, they also provide career centers offering professional development programmes and job banks for all age segments to facilitate their professional success.

Challenges

Dedicated to bringing together top talent and employers in one collaborative setting, the Singapore Workforce Development Agency (WDA) wanted to spearhead their objective of promoting employment. With an abundance of professional opportunities and passionate individuals competing for them, organizing a physical career fair was failing to meet the most fundamental of their goals:

• High Risk Hosting: With an intimidatingly large target audience of job seekers and professionals, organizing an event would be difficult, costly, stressful, and high risk due to unpredictable attendee traffic.
• Weak First Impressions: No prior information about exhibitors and their vacancies made it hard for job seekers to target positions and ensure thorough pre-preparation.
• Manual CV Collection & Sorting: Accumulating stacks of CVs that took weeks to screen slowed down recruitment, were prone to misplacement, and added zero value towards enabling collaborative decision making amongst HR teams.
• Distracted Employers: High visitor volumes translated into inefficiency, exhaustion, confusion, and consequently inaccurate candidate selection.
• Limited Outreach: Top talent in other cities and distant areas had to incur travel and accommodation expenses that strongly hindered their desire to participate.
• Vague Results: Acquiring real-time data to identify preferred employers, job types, unique and recurring visitors, etc was practically impossible- thus providing no insights to help improve skill development programmes and job placement initiatives.

Focus Areas & Solutions

The Singapore Workforce Development Agency (WDA) was able to deploy a budget-conscious and technologically driven strategy by hosting a Virtual Career Fair customized to meet their precise goals, cut down on costs, expand reach to a larger target audience, in addition to proving their commitment towards helping employers effectively connect with leading talent:

1) Superior Applicant Tracking Tools

To truly deliver an outstanding experience, the vFairs team incorporated applicant tracking system functions into the platform to help employers filter resumes based on criteria of their choice such as qualification, industry, salary expectations, etc. This allowed them to achieve higher candidate relevancy, and in turn exercise quick yet confident candidate shortlisting.

Instead of relying on a bird’s eye view of the participating talent, they could now zoom-in to target specific job seekers, easily export data, and collaborate with recruitment team members to drastically reduce time-to-hire.

2) Remarkable Job Seeker Experience

The event was segmented into “virtual floors“; each floor targeted a particular industry, for e.g. technology, government, banking, etc. This smart navigation allowed job seekers to switch between exhibitors in a jiffy, or use the search option to directly skip to their desired employer’s booth in practically no time. To further add efficiency, visitors could schedule live chat with recruiters without waiting in queues in the notoriously loud and distracting career fair setting.

There’s more- the E-Resources and access to a Career Coach led the visitors to a comprehensive library of information ranging from recorded webinars, Jobsbank access and expert advice to make their job search experience engaging, informative and welcoming instead of tedious and dull.

3) High Energy Recruitment

Despite the fast-paced nature of the event, recruiters had powerful tools to communicate with visitors either directly or in group settings for maximum impact. No more redundant questions to answer and fixed 10 minute time slots for all one-on-one chat sessions meant focused conversations, effortless time management and no more frazzled hiring managers.

4) Unparalleled Outreach & Accessibility

The Virtual Career Fair enabled job seekers to participate remotely, even via a mobile device with internet access. Meanwhile, the host kept the edge off their nerves with no hassles linked to small venue capacities, rental costs, or short-lived event value; the content could be easily accessed by visitors online even after the career fair was over.

5) Measuring Event Performance

Results are essential to provide perspective on ROI. The event dashboard provided real-time data to track traffic alongside pivotal KPIs ranging from vacancies attracting most applications, new and repeat visitors, tab clicks on booths, total volume of applicants per booth, and more to help the host assess how the job seekers were reacting to the virtual shift.

Results

Singapore Workforce Development Agency’s (WDA) Virtual Career Fair was a massive success, and a great asset towards assisting job seekers and qualified professionals in enhancing their careers by building connections with the most reputable employers- all in one convenient online setting. The 15 day event delivered impressive ROI made evident by the stats captured via the reporting dashboard:

• Widespread Employer Interest: With 500 jobs from 50 leading companies exhibited, the convenience of eliminated costs linked to travel, logistics, marketing collateral, and lost productivity was a huge motivation for employers to participate.
• Increased Job Seeker Attendance: Generating almost 3000 unique registrations, the sheer volume of attendees proved exponential improvement in outreach and accessibility that broke all geographical barriers.
• Recruitment Powerhouse: Aiding in organizing, sorting and shortlisting winning candidates, the applicant tracking system functions embedded into the platform revolutionized recruitment and career fair participation for recruiters.
• Measurable Results: With booths receiving up-to 2109 visits and 841 tab clicks, the virtual technology was a relief for exhibitors; accommodating this number of job seekers in a physical setting would have otherwise been utterly chaotic, tiring and monotonous.
• Cost & Time Savings: Affordability, quick set up, and round-the-clock support from the dedicated vFairs project managers working to perfect every event detail ensured a stress free experience for WDA so they could remain committed towards pursuing their mission with priceless peace of mind.

About vFairs

At vFairs.com, we strive to build a top-class online event platform that will help event organizers make memorable connections with their target audience. We’re obsessed with taking out the hassle normally associated with physical events and leaving organizers and exhibitors to focus on what’s most important: engagement with the audience.

Get in touch with an expert to learn more about vFairs here.