How to Conduct Virtual Recruitment [Guide 2025]

Ever wondered how some companies make recruitment faster, easier, and more cost-effective?

The secret is virtual recruitment, a game-changer in how businesses find and hire talent.

But what exactly is virtual recruitment? It’s all about using technology to handle the hiring process online. From screening resumes and conducting interviews to onboarding new hires, virtual recruitment eliminates the need for face-to-face meetings, enabling you to connect with candidates from anywhere in the world.

In this blog, we’ll dive into the benefits of virtual recruitment, share tips on getting started, and offer advice on hosting a virtual recruitment event that keeps candidates engaged and helps you find the best talent.

Benefits of Virtual Recruiting

Let’s discuss some top benefits of virtual recruiting & hiring that will make you go digital for your next recruitment drive:

1. Wider Audience Reach

Virtual recruitment takes geographical limitations out of the picture, allowing you to reach everyone who is interested. 

For example, if you host a physical hiring event in California, then you’ll only be able to reach people located there. But if you’re hosting a virtual hiring event, the entire world is welcome.

And with more people participating in your hiring events, you get access to a wider talent pool. This way, you fill in positions with people who can truly wing it.

This is especially beneficial for smaller employers who lack a sizable recruiting staff dedicated to sourcing talent. 

2. Saves Time Through Automation

A well-planned virtual recruitment process uses automation tools to take care of bulk manual tasks like sending emails to shortlisted candidates. Doing so will help you streamline and optimize the entire process to make sure your recruiting time is used effectively. 

3. Cost-Effective

In the long run, your company will also save money on interview expenses. Not only this, but also travel expenses for your out-of-town candidates.

4. Saves Commute Hassle

No one enjoys rushing through traffic for an interview. Virtual recruiting removes that hassle altogether. Candidates can join from the comfort of home, and your team can meet top talent without the added scheduling headache.

5. Enhanced Candidate Experience

Virtual hiring gives candidates more flexibility and control over the process. They can schedule interviews at times that work for them, reach out directly to recruiters through chat, and learn more about the company at their own pace. It also opens the door for more honest, open conversations with less pressure. This kind of convenience and easy access makes the whole experience smoother, more informative, and a lot less stressful.

How to Host A Successful Virtual Recruitment Event 

As you shift your face-to-face recruiting online, it’s important to keep your existing recruitment philosophy intact. You should be able to make a point to reinforce your employer brand and values throughout the recruiting process.

While this detail is a critical part of all recruiting, it’s even more important in the case of a virtual setting. This is because your applicants will have significantly less in-person interaction with your team as well as your organization. 

There is a long list of companies that have found many creative ways to successfully utilize virtual recruitment. Many of such top companies constantly promote recruitment efforts on their social media pages. Also, they create a branded hashtag to promote their events, offer weekly virtual chats, and much more. They also offer numerous online hiring events to provide candidates with the best opportunities to connect with their organization. 

With the above-mentioned points in mind, here we have gathered three proven strategies for an effective virtual placement drive:

1. Hosting Virtual Job Fairs and Open Houses

You can host effective virtual “meet and greets” as part of your online recruitment strategies. Rather than just relying on job postings or individual interviews, this approach offers a more immersive and interactive environment where candidates can get a fuller sense of the company and its opportunities.

Focus on hosting live video conferencing meetings during which you can invite prospective candidates to “meet” the hiring managers. They can also enjoy virtual office tours and Q&As with your team members. Job fairs and open houses are some great ways to engage with talent. It will also give them a chance to learn more about the company.

A great example of this is how the Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC) in Canada hosted a virtual career fair using vFairs to connect employers with internationally educated professionals (IEPs). With 180+ attendees, 1,100+ booth interactions, and 50+ webinar participants, the event helped ICTC build overseas networks, promote SME opportunities, and create meaningful connections, all in a fully virtual setting.

2. Conduct Pre-Scheduled and On-the-Fly Screening 

When screening candidates in a virtual recruitment event, it’s all about being efficient while ensuring you’re spotting the right talent. You want to get to know your candidates well without wasting time, and fortunately, virtual career fair platforms like vFairs give you a lot of flexibility to do that.

Pre-Scheduled Screening

Pre-scheduled screening is all about staying organized and proactive. Before the event even starts, you can review resumes and applications to find standout candidates, then schedule time to meet with them. This gives you a chance to focus on the candidates who are already catching your eye.

But beyond just reviewing resumes, there are other ways to screen candidates during the pre-scheduled process:

• Questionnaires: You can set up specific questions as prerequisites when candidates apply for a role. These questions can be tailored to assess key aspects of the candidate’s fit for the position. For example, for a sales manager role, you might ask if they’re comfortable with a commute-heavy position, or for a research-based role, you could inquire about their experience in interacting with people.
  These questions help you quickly filter candidates based on their qualifications, experience, and compatibility with the role, making it easier to identify who’s a match right from the start.

• Cover Letters: Reviewing cover letters allows you to assess a candidate’s communication skills and motivation. It’s a great way to see if they’ve taken the time to tailor their application to your specific job posting.
• One-Way Video Interviews: A more flexible option for pre-scheduled screening, one-way video interviews let candidates record answers to a set of pre-determined questions. You can review their responses when it works for you, and it gives you a sense of how they communicate in a more personal way without requiring a live interaction.

These tools help you organize and filter through applicants before the event, ensuring you’re spending your time with candidates who have already demonstrated their potential.

On-the-Fly Screening

On-the-fly screening is about staying flexible and being ready to engage with candidates who catch your attention during the event. As candidates interact in live sessions, you may spot people who weren’t initially on your radar but seem like they could be a good fit.

• Quick Skill Challenges: If you’re recruiting for specific skills, you could ask candidates to complete a quick task on the spot, whether it’s solving a problem, drafting a quick response, or brainstorming ideas. This lets you gauge their abilities in real-time.
• Live Chats: While this might blend into the interview stage later, initial on-the-fly live chats can be a great way to get a sense of the candidate’s communication style and gauge their enthusiasm or interest in the role. These impromptu chats give you a feel for how they present themselves in a real-time setting.
  

On-the-fly screening gives you the ability to interact with candidates in real-time and assess them based on their behavior and engagement during the event before proceeding to the interview stage. This ensures you don’t miss out on someone who could be a great fit with minimal effort.

3. Assess Applicants With Virtual Interviews

Virtual interviews are essential for connecting with candidates, especially when you can’t meet face-to-face. They let you reach a broader pool of talent and make the hiring process a lot more flexible. It’s a great way to assess a candidate’s qualifications, communication skills, and overall fit for your company when you’re not in the same room. Plus, they’re super efficient, saving time and allowing you to get to know candidates better without all the logistics of in-person meetings.

There are a few different types of virtual interviews, each one serving a different purpose depending on what you need.

Live Video Interviews

Live video interviews are real-time, face-to-face conversations where you can ask follow-up questions and dig deeper into a candidate’s experience. These interviews help you connect with candidates in a more personal way, allowing you to assess things like body language and their ability to think on their feet. It’s also a chance to see how they handle live interactions, which is key for most roles.

Panel Interviews

Panel interviews are when multiple team members join in on the interview at once. This format is especially useful when you’re hiring for a role that requires collaboration across departments. 

Instead of scheduling multiple one-on-one interviews, a panel lets you get everyone’s input at once, saving time and giving you a more rounded view of the candidate. Plus, it shows the candidate how they’d interact with different team members.

Task-Based Interviews

In task-based interviews, candidates are asked to complete a live assignment or challenge related to the role. This type of interview is great for positions that require specific skills, like coding, writing, or problem-solving. It lets you see the candidate in action, showing you how they handle tasks under pressure and whether they have the right technical abilities for the job.

Group Interviews

Group interviews involve multiple candidates being interviewed at once. This format works well when you want to see how candidates interact with each other, especially if the role requires teamwork or communication skills. It’s a great way to observe how they collaborate, how they contribute to group discussions, and how they handle working with others.

4. Leverage Creative Event Features to Encourage Participation 

Virtual recruiting events don’t have to be boring or dull. In fact, when planned well, they will act as the best promotional tool to attract candidates to your company. 

Not only should you use the event to source, screen, and recruit candidates through meetings & calls, you should make it a fun, engaging experience that entices candidates to want to work for you. 

Set up educational sessions about life at your company, career opportunities, and even workshops offering advice to candidates about how to stand out in the interview process. 

Another impactful virtual recruitment idea is to gamify your event with scavenger hunts or leaderboards that award prizes to attendees with the most points at the end of the event. 

You can also spice up networking by enabling AI-powered matchmaking to connect recruiters with job seekers faster. Or use innovative features like vFairs spatial connect to allow people to huddle around and have informal chats, like an in-person event.

We recommend that you select a long list of team members that will appear live throughout the event. In this way, your candidates will have the opportunity to ‘meet’ your team.

One of the great virtual recruiting ideas is to host a few Q&A sessions. We urge you to encourage discussion amongst the prospective hires and your current staff. This idea works wonders for engaging your audience as well as identifying attendees, especially those who have their finger on the pulse.

5. Don’t Ignore Employer Branding

Amplify your branding with exciting custom 3D virtual environments. Even in the case of virtual recruitment, don’t forget to keep thinking of ways to showcase your unique employer branding. You have the freedom to be as creative as possible. Create a welcome video for candidates that they can view before or after the interview, or give virtual office tours.

6.  Promote Your Virtual Event Across All Digital Platforms

Starting from your website to your social media pages and email lists, leverage every channel available to advertise your event. This is important to maximize candidate participation. 

7. Focus On Clear Communication During Interviews

One drawback to video interviews is that you are unable to depend much on non-verbal communication to evaluate a candidate. 

A few of the important factors to keep in mind that can make virtual interviews feel awkward include:

• Delays between the two parties speaking 
• A blurry video feed
• Miscommunication

You need to focus on what the candidate is saying as well as their experiences, but not those awkward moments.

8. Follow-up With Attendees Post-event

It is important to make sure that you send an email or direct message to your entire attendee list. It should be thanking them for attending the event as well as encouraging them to reach out if any of them have additional questions. 

9. Implement Metrics to Track Success

Along with tracking the number of people who register and attend your virtual events, you can also calculate the number of applications received, the number of meetings booked, and the number of candidates who have successfully made it to the next step in the interview process as a result of their activity at the event. This can help you refine your virtual recruiting event ideas to improve engagement and outcomes for future events.

Pro Tips for Virtual Recruitment 

Tips to conduct a successful virtual recruiting event include:

1. Comply with Data Collection Guidelines

Whenever you use virtual recruitment technology and you collect data online, you must abide by data collection guidelines. 

Take precautions to make sure your recruitment process is non-discriminatory. It should be as per the Equality Act, which means at no stage should your recruitment funnel filter out candidates due to their age, gender, marital status, disability, religion, or race. 

One of the best ways to reduce unconscious bias is to introduce principles of blind hiring into your virtual recruitment process. This includes blind resume screening. This is just one of the many ways that will help you eliminate prejudice from your virtual recruitment process.

Also, if you’re recruiting virtually in a variety of countries, you must make legal considerations for all of them. This is because local labor and privacy laws might differ from each other. For example, if you’re recruiting virtually in Europe, you need to ensure that the virtual recruitment tools that you’re using are all GDPR compliant.

2. Abide by the Country’s Legal Requirements

If you’re hiring across regions or countries, it’s crucial to understand and follow local labor and privacy laws. Every country may have different rules when it comes to things like data protection, candidate consent, and interview practices. For example, if you’re recruiting in the EU, your virtual recruitment tools must be GDPR-compliant. Make sure your team is aware of these requirements early on to avoid any legal hiccups and ensure a smooth, compliant hiring process.

3. Develop Efficient Assessment Mechanisms

It’s not just about attracting candidates to your virtual event, it’s about identifying the right ones. That’s where having clear, efficient assessment methods in place makes all the difference. 

Start by building structured screening steps into your process. Use pre-event application forms or short assessments to help filter candidates before the event even begins. During the event, consider tools like live skill challenges, timed quizzes, or scenario-based questions to evaluate candidates in real time. These online recruitment methods allow you to assess candidates remotely and efficiently. 

You can also enable booth reps or hiring managers to take quick notes or assign scores during conversations, so feedback is captured while it’s still fresh. This helps streamline post-event decisions and makes it easier to follow up with the most promising candidates.

4. Keep Your Candidates Well-Informed 

Virtual recruitment can be an uninvolved experience. Such experience often leaves candidates unsure about where they stand. This usually happens due to a lack of personal connection as well as feedback. 

However, just because you are making use of remote and digital strategies to screen potential recruits, it doesn’t at all mean you are unable to offer a human touch to the experience.

So, you should tackle this issue by making candidates well-aware about what your virtual hiring process looks like from the get-go. 

Also, what stage are the candidates at? It is important to explain to them beforehand what tools you will be using during the process of recruiting virtually and how they can prepare. 

One excellent virtual recruiting idea is to introduce the candidate to their interviewer in advance. You can organize this with the help of email or LinkedIn. This will allow the applicant to do their homework relevant to the interviewer. Doing so often works wonders for putting the mind of your candidate at ease.

A lot of recruitment communication can easily be automated with the help of candidate relationship management tools, email marketing software, or your pre-employment testing suite. You can send relevant information to your candidates that will be based on the stage of the recruitment process they’re in, plus who is the hiring manager.

It is highly suggested to keep the lines of communication open. Also, give candidates an option to contact you via their preferred communication channel. This can be social media, email, or even phone.

5. Stay Organized with a Candidate Pipeline

When hosting a virtual career fair, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with the volume of applicants. That’s why having a candidate pipeline is essential. By organizing candidates into categories, such as new applications, shortlisted, hired, or rejected, you can keep everything in one place and track progress more efficiently.

This system helps ensure that your hiring team stays aligned, with everyone knowing exactly where each candidate stands. It reduces confusion, improves communication, and makes the decision-making process faster and smoother. Staying organized throughout the recruitment process means you can make quicker, more informed hiring decisions without losing track of top talent.

6. Adapt Your Virtual Recruitment Tech Stack

A good virtual recruitment process is heavily supported by technology. Also, you might need to better adjust your usual recruitment tech stack. It is important to check and ensure that it has the necessary capabilities or not.

For example, if you plan to conduct one-way video interviews, you need to know if your existing tech supports that. Or will you need to implement new software for this purpose? Are you able to upload company videos to your assessments to introduce your organization along with its culture?

Whenever you wish to implement new virtual hiring event software, it is important to ensure that it integrates with your ATS. This is crucial to create a seamless experience for virtual recruiters and candidates alike.

If you’re expecting higher volumes of applications, it is important to consider using chatbots as virtual recruitment assistants. You can program it to answer frequently asked questions. It can also be used to redirect candidates to where they can find the help they are looking for.

You see, it is an effortless way to ease the workload of your support team and provide instant responses to applicants. A win-win situation for both! 

7. Developing a Comprehensive Virtual Onboarding Program

Your job doesn’t end once candidates are hired. It’s important to have a comprehensive onboarding program in place that makes new recruits feel well-informed and welcomed from the get-go. 

Here is what you need to consider when developing a comprehensive virtual onboarding program:

Use An Effective Virtual Recruiting Technology Solution 

Technology is the cornerstone of virtual onboarding. It is important to ensure that adequate technology is available for all employees. You can start with identifying the required virtual onboarding platform as well as providing essential hardware to new hires. This includes necessary network access and configuration. 

Design An Orientation Schedule

Onboarding doesn’t end after an employee is onboarded; you need to think beyond.. This long-term process is meant to coordinate with new employees at all levels of the organization. 

Send your new hires a detailed list of trainings and tasks to complete within their first 30, 60, and 90 days so they have clear instructions about how to shift seamlessly into their position and role as a company employee. 

High-quality virtual onboarding platforms will allow you to track employee progress automatically, to the point that employees may not even need to self-report on their tasks accomplished.

Communicate Often

New hires often feel lost at a new job during the first few days. Physical distance can heighten this feeling even more. To lessen the struggle of your remote employees, be sure to carry out frequent and clear communication. 

How Virtual Recruitment Platforms Help You Host Successful Events

Virtual recruitment platforms make it so much easier to run a smooth, successful event. You can set up custom virtual booths, host live chats and video interviews, and track how candidates are engaging with your event in real-time. Plus, with tools for scheduling, resume uploads, and analytics, everything is organized in one place, so you can focus on connecting with the right talent and following up after the event.

If you’re ready to take your recruitment events to the next level, book a demo with vFairs and see how our all-in-one solution can help make your hiring process more efficient and effective.

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