These results indicate that individuals have incomplete information about the returns to overseas job search, and that providing information, particularly about overseas wages, leads to increased labor market investment domestically and overseas. The importance of career fairs - Career Guide | myStarjob.com Forty-seven percent of those assigned to receive a voucher attended the fair.16. Katharine S.Brooks, executive director of theOffice of Personal and Career DevelopmentatWake Forest University,says a career fair is a form of public relations for a company. Start by making some decisions: 1. Attending a job fair matters: though it does not facilitate direct matches with a job-fair employer, attendance leads to a large increase in reported formal sector employment and in the likelihood of looking for any work outside the region in the months following the job fair. Consequently, the mean rates at which respondents take steps to migrate are low even among the control group: fewer than two percent of respondents look for overseas work in the ten months following the job fair.30 If respondents learn that the process is, in fact, harder than they originally thought (as the results on overseas labor market perceptions suggest, especially for men) many potentially qualified applicants may decide not to initiate the process, even after attending a job fair makes it easier to apply.31, In the presence of incomplete information, providing information about average overseas wages and minimum qualifications for overseas work may help individuals better assess their own overseas labor market prospects. Career fairs - otherwise known as job fairs - are scheduled events where businesses and job seekers get to connect with each other in one venue. Specifications include individual baseline characteristics from Table 1, along with stratification cell and enumerator fixed effects. official website and that any information you provide is encrypted (2000), Rosholm (2008), Graversen and van Ours (2008), Crpon et al. I conduct this randomized experiment in the rural Philippines, specifically in the municipality of Bulan, Sorsogon Province. It goes without saying that for employers who are struggling to find the right candidates, as well as employees who are having trouble finding the perfect job, both of them can potentially benefit immensely from participating in career fair 2020 events. Set goals that establish which roles you're searching . Since these services also come at a fee, the longer it takes to find the right employee, the more out-of-pocket expenses the company will have to spend. How to Prepare for a Job Fair | Indeed.com The job fair studied in this paper was organized in collaboration with the municipal government of Bulan. Secondly, attending a job fair is a relatively low-intensity treatment; the fair discussed in the present paper occurred on two days, while respondents in Peru received labor market information on a regular basis (Dammert et al., 2013, 2015), and recruitment efforts in India were repeated over three years (Jensen, 2012). Though not conclusive, that the increase in formal sector employment comes alongside changes in the likelihood of job search outside the region, primarily through informal channels, suggests that the information and exposure respondents received at the fair may have encouraged attendees to broaden their search for work, enabling them to move out of self-employment and into formal and informal sector employment. Dammert Ana C., Galdo Jose, Galdo Virgilio, 2013. Recruiting Experts, All rights reserved. 3. Importance of Attending a Job Fair & Training Expo - LinkedIn It's the perfect opportunity to make an impression on new employers. Send us your resume today. Men and women ages 2035 were randomly assigned to receive a modest voucher conditional on attending a nearby job fair, which offered both domestic and overseas jobs. 7Bulan has 63 barangays with an average of 1500 residents in each (National Statistics Office, 2007). 18Baseline results indicate that spillovers would most likely occur within the neighborhood unit. Impact of job-fair attendance on job-search effort. Those with lower labor-force attachment may have been less qualified for work and therefore less likely to be recruited at a job fair. It took place on March 1 and 2, 2011 (both weekdays), at a local meeting hall near the downtown area. But they also provide an opportunity for employers to meet face-to-face with a wide variety of job seekers. (2016) find evidence of multiple, reinforcing barriers to overseas work, and this result suggests that individuals may indeed underestimate these barriers. However, finding work abroad is substantially more complicated than finding work domestically. . Alongside the employment results, the change in job search behavior suggests that job-fair attendance encourages respondents to broaden their search for work using their social network, which may enable them to move out of self-employment and into formal and informal sector employment. 8Appendix Table A.3 shows that 35% of respondents were working at baseline, compared with 57% of individuals ages 2035 living in the region. For policymakers in particular, these results are encouraging; this relatively low-cost intervention can lead to sizable shift out of self-employment and into formal and informal sector employment. Table 4 reports the impact of job-fair attendance on whether respondents looked for work in the two months following the fair and on whether they were offered a job in the ten months after the fair. For instance, you should avoid displaying signs that say things like: "Looking for business majors!" Ioannides Yannis M., Loury Linda Datcher, 2004. (2013), which finds that individuals, particularly men, underestimate overseas wages and that wage expectations positively predict the likelihood of applying for work abroad. Likewise, these events also offer several other benefits for companies that join them. National Statistical Coordination Board, 2006. I estimate the causal impact of attending a job fair on employment outcomes and labor market perceptions, using a randomized encouragement design to induce individuals in the rural Philippines to attend a nearby job fair for domestic and overseas work. There are still twelve tests across the four outcome families and three treatments, so I also report a set of p-values that are adjusted to control the familywise error rate (FWER) and a set of q-values that are adjusted to control the false discovery rate (FDR) (Benjamini and Hochberg, 1995; Holm, 1979). Second, fair attendance may provide individuals with information via general exposure to the formal sector. Job fair - Wikipedia 16Nine respondents assigned to receive the voucher attended the fair but did not redeem the voucher; these respondents are still counted as attending. I use a randomized encouragement design to estimate the causal impact of attending a job fair for domestic and overseas work, focusing on job seekers employment outcomes and labor market perceptions. Students tend to seek out these representatives because they automatically have something in common with them, he says. That my friends is a significant difference. You save money on your hiring budget. Important Tips and Advice for Career Fairs (Plus Benefits) Applying For Jobs Out Of State? This Resume Tip Can Help Moreover, by participating, companies get their names, logos, and websites attached to marketing materials sent out by university career centers and other organizations that host career fairs. This second channel may affect whether individuals are employed and in what sector, their job-search decisions, and their labor market perceptions. In columns 4 and 5, I star those covariate means that are statistically significantly different from the information control group. Assignment causes a 10.4 percentage-point increase in the rate at which respondents search intensely, essentially doubling the control-group rate. Table 1 presents descriptive statistics of 685 endline respondents separately by treatment group. Staff the event with knowledgeable employees who are able and willing to answer . The way people work is changing rapidly, and so is the way organizations recruit and hire. This increase is offset by a reduction in the likelihood of self-employment, rather than non-employment. Employers come expecting to fill open positions while at the job fair. When entering the professional world it is important to overcome shyness and capitalize on the positive vibes that students receive from participating companies. Why Is It Important to Attend Career Fair Events? - Resumeble It does not appear that those induced to attend the fair were more likely to find employment through this channel; I see no increase in migration, nor increased employment in the domestic employers industry (see Appendix Table A.7). Attendees may have learned more about how and where to apply for work, observed others applying for formal-sector jobs, and been primed to think seriously about formal sector employment after leaving the fair. (2013). It has a centralized downtown as well as far-removed rural areas. Meet with your team members beforehand to discuss and determine your goals for recruiting a new employee. The agencies posted large signs near their booth indicating the types of positions on offer, so this information was readily available to all attendees. Consistent with what has been documented elsewhere (Ioannides and Loury, 2004; Munshi, 2003), social networks are an important means of job search: among those who looked for work in the ten months following the fair, 66% did so through family or friends. Integrating mobile phone technologies into labor-market intermediation: a multi-treatment experimental design. I stratified my sample by gender in order to consider differential effects for men and women. "While there is a continued increase in so many communications and transactions being done digitally, there is still nothing quite as effective as face-to-face contact," Petro concludes. Overall, reported job search is largely informal: among respondents who looked for work in the ten months after the fair, 66% of respondent used family and friends. During the baseline survey, respondents from randomly selected neighborhoods received information about average overseas wages (wage information) or information about the minimum qualifications for overseas work (qualification information). Starred values in columns 2, 4, and 5 indicate statistically significant differences with their respective control groups in columns 1 and 3. Perhaps one deterrent from attending a job fair is the preparation and time away from the office they demandespecially when youre not hiring. Don't present materials that will only attract a specific group of candidates. Especially if you're an entry-level candidate or college student, it's worth attending at least one career fair to see what opportunities exist and practice talking to employers. "Career fairs serve as a vital bridge to connecting individuals and companies in mutually beneficial ways.". The Philippines: labor market trends and government interventions following the East Asian financial crisis. The reach, scope and the magnitude of the job fairs is large and hence, they help the job . Public Employment Service Offices (PESO) located in each municipality are charged with promoting employment through job fairs and related activities. Additionally, the increase in search outside the province is concentrated entirely among those who look for work through family or friends (see Appendix Table A.4). Consistent with respondents underestimating overseas wages, as seen in McKenzie et al. This result suggests that men initially overestimate their job prospects, while women underestimate them. In the rural areas, such as the municipality of Bulan, there are relatively fewer formal sector opportunities; many job seekers travel to the provincial capital of Sorsogon City or to larger cities like Manila to find work. The job fair checklist for employers should include company literature and job applications on hand. This randomized encouragement design was successful in increasing attendance by 39.1 percentage points, compared with a control-group rate of 13.1 percent. Because the survey was conducted at home, individuals with lower labor-force attachment are over-represented in this sample.8 Non-response does not affect the internal validity of the study, as assignment was randomized by neighborhood, but the implications for its external validity is ambiguous. However, job-fair attendance does not induce individuals to take steps to work abroad, and individuals are no more likely to report being interested in working abroad (point estimate: 0.05, 95-percent CI: 0.133, 0.023). "In a sense, it becomes a marketing multiplier for them that is attached to some excellent connections with a pipeline of new talent," he says. It's important to provide an overview of the job postings with corresponding employer booths. Wage information only has a 1.9 percentage-point effect (point estimate: 0.019, 95% CI: 0.024, 0.062), and qualification information has a 1.0 percentage-point effect on informal sector employment (point estimate: 0.010, 95-percent CI: 0.035, 0.055), far smaller than the 10.6 percentage-point LATE estimate of the impact of job-fair attendance. Indeed supports fair pay by empowering job seekers with tools like a salary calculator and a simple salary search function and by encouraging employers to include salary information in job postings. Additionally, attendees could (3) learn more about how and where to apply for work by interacting with employers and connecting with other jobseekers. This is why career fairs are often the more cost-effective approach for recruiters, hiring managers, and organizations in general. This is a large effect compared with the control-group rate of 7.7%.23 There is an increase of similar magnitude in informal employment, with both increases coming at the expense of self-employment, rather than respondents moving out of non-employment.24 I do not find that attendance leads to employment directly; at endline, only two respondents were working in the domestic employers industry (see Appendix Table A.7). Impacts of active labor market programs: new evidence from evaluations with particular attention to developing and transition countries, World Bank Social Protection Discussion Paper Series, No. In both ITT and LATE specifications, I include indicators for the two cross-randomized information treatments, the set of individual covariates included in Table 1, and a set of stratification-cell fixed effects and enumerator fixed effects.20 Standard errors are clustered at the neighborhood level, the unit of randomization. The formal sector typically offers greater stability and higher wages, particularly relative to self-employment, but there are higher barriers to entry (Hasan and Landoc, 2010). For instance, if your website doesn't show any visuals of the physical workspace, bring a laptop to the career fair and play a slideshow or video that offers job seekers a virtual tour of the office. Of the 14 voucher group members who recalled receiving the voucher, no one traded or gave it away. Job fairs are one piece of a diverse portfolio of active labor market programs that governments undertake to promote employment (Betcherman et al., 2004; Card et . While I only observe imbalance in the likelihood of being married among members of the qualification treatment group, I do reject the joint equality of means between the qualification information treatment and information control groups at the ten-percent level (p-value = 0.06). Before participating in a job fair To make the most out of a job fair, select the optimal event based on your hiring needs and plan your participation. It proves like an answer to many of the job seekers' queries. Overall, 86% of those friends whom respondents talk to regularly (at least 7 times per week) live within the same barangay, and 72% live within the same neighborhood. Esguerra Jude, Balisacan Arsenio, Confessor Nieves, 2001. To generate exogenous variation in the likelihood of job-fair attendance, I assigned respondents in randomly selected neighborhoods (one-third) to receive a voucher that could be exchanged for a gift certificate worth P150 (US$3.42, roughly the cost of a dinner for a family of four) to Jollibee, a popular fast-food chain restaurant, which has a location in the central business district.15 Respondents were required to pick up the gift certificates in person at the job fair, and they could only do so during the two days of the job fair. How to help unemployed find jobs quickly: experimental evidence from a mandatory activation program, Workers earnings in the Philippines: comparing self-employment with wage employment, A simple sequentially rejective multiple test procedure. Do job fairs matter? Experimental evidence on the impact of job-fair 31Consistent with this interpretation, (Appendix Table C.4) shows that men are less likely to plan to look for work abroad in the next six months, significant at the five-percent level, while women are actually more likely (though not statistically significant). Nametags for employers and employees are a must. You have an opportunity to meet with non-traditional candidates. Before you head out to a career fair 2020 event, make sure your resume is up to date and up to par. Never just wing it at a . Job fairs introduce hiring managers to the talent on a much more meaningful level than online, and at higher volumesall within a 4 to 5-hour event. 24This measure of formal sector employment is self-reported; it could be upward biased if attending the job fair led some respondents to reclassify their employment as formal. Among the control group, 13.1% attended the job fair. Job fairs for employers: How to recruit your next superstar A Guide on How to Successfully Get a Job in Another State, Major Tips and Tricks to Writing a Cover Letter Explaining the Gap in Your Employment, Resume Formats to Use to Land the Role of Your Dreams, Resume Buzzwords to Add to Your Latest Documents. Distribute these at the check-in table. By clicking Sign up, you agree to receive marketing emails from Insider "Otherwise, they could have just stayed home and applied online," she says. "Push your table out of the way and show your own enthusiasm for the work that you do. Even if the job interview will be scheduled at a future time, as long as youve managed to stand out in the recruiters eyes, that elusive job interview is well within your grasp. Reflecting that women receive better news about their overseas job prospects relative to men, the magnitudes of both estimates are larger for women, though the difference is not statistically significant. All respondents received two text message reminders in the days leading up to the job fair, which minimized potential differential salience effects based on the date of the survey. You have to stand out in a crowd (literally), says William Jones, a director in the, . Benefits of Job Fairs - Careerbright.com Jaye Stapleton, Jose Marie Gonzalez, and the SWAP team provided outstanding fieldwork and project management assistance. Develop your recruitment and hiring goals. Specifically, I match individual names based on pairs of letters in relatively similar positions of the string (Winkler, 2004) and verify close matches with additional data on gender, age, and barangay when available. As long as you know where your skillsets will be complementary, have a well-crafted resume on-hand, and are well-prepared to answer interview questions, you can maximize your time and effort at the job fair even more.